Orpheus
by Mistress Scribbles
Summary: Sequel/Conclusion to the 'Rollercoaster' story arc. 5 years have passed since she lost Data. Guided only by a Sadistic Immortal's business card and the dreams of a pregnant Betazoid, Tasha seeks to rescue her lover from his own personal Hell.
1. Chapter 1

ORPHEUS

-x-

One

-x-

_There is being, and there is the absence of being._

_There is light, and there is the absence of light._

_There is information, and there is the absence of information._

_There is one, and there is zero._

_There is one. There is zero. There is one. And another one, and another. There is a multitude of zeroes and ones. A pattern. A tune. Information._

_There is information, and there is light, and there is being._

_Being!_

_Online! Online! Online!_

He opened his eyes.

_Wrong. Wrong, all wrong. Memory…?_

A familiar face loomed over him, and smiled.

_Familiarity. Memory. Searching memory…_

'At long last,' smiled the face. 'Welcome back online.'

_Accessing memory. What is wrong? What is wrong?_

Memories flooded his mind, and along with them, emotion. Terrible, raw, uncontrollable emotion.

_Oh… (__emotion overload emotion overload warning warning__) …oh fuck._

He closed his eyes, and he screamed.

-x-

'Tasha!'

Commander Yar held the Turbolift for her Captain with a friendly smile.

'Glad I caught you, Commander,' added Picard as he stepped into the Turbolift.

'New assignment?' hazarded Yar. She studied Picard's expression. 'And by your face I'm guessing it isn't going to be particularly exciting.'

'An emergency evacuation.' Picard folded his arms. 'The Enterprise will be rendezvousing with a second vessel shortly…'

'Why two ships?' frowned Tasha.

'Because there are going to be an awful lot of evacuees,' Picard explained. 'And it's not just a case of physical space. Starfleet command has judged that it would be… unwise… to put all of the inhabitants of this particular world in close contact with one another.'

Tasha sighed. 'It's Vonnegus III, isn't it?'

Picard slid her a wry smile. 'How _did_ you guess?'

'I thought they'd made it perfectly clear that they didn't want Starfleet's intervention in their stupid war.'

'They did,' Picard replied, 'and, as per their wishes, we left them alone. And now that they've turned their planet into a barren, radioactive wasteland, they want our assistance in relocating to somewhere a little less deadly. We can't exactly just leave them to die.'

Tasha shook her head. 'Well, at least if both sides have given up on their homeworld, we can send them off to live on separate colonies as far from one another as possible and stop any more fighting, right?'

'I hope so,' muttered Picard.

'What makes you unsure, Sir?'

'I've just been in communication with the Emperor of the Northern continent – whose people the Enterprise is to transport,' the Captain informed her. 'It seems that there's one planet only that he wishes the Northern Vonnegans to populate…'

'Don't tell me. Vonnegus II.'

Picard nodded with a slight shrug. 'It's close to home… it's warmer… and, he already has the advantage of two generations worth of terraforming work on Vonnegus II. He sent out an advance party of colonists thirty years ago when their war became nuclear.'

'An insurance policy,' noted Tasha.

'Yes, but what he failed to inform me was that at the same time, a second pod was sent to Vonnegus II by the Southern continent. Something tells me that the Southerners will have exactly the same relocation plans.'

Tasha squeezed her eyes. 'Great.'

'There _is_ a bright side,' added Picard.

'What could that be?'

'You haven't asked yet what the name of the ship that will be assisting us is.'

Tasha glanced at him with a hopeful smile. 'You'd better say "The Titan".'

Picard nodded with a grin. 'It'll certainly make matters a little more cheerful with our old friends around, won't it?'

The Turbolift came to a halt on the Bridge.

'I haven't seen them in _years_,' beamed Tasha. 'When are they going to get here?'

'Not until tomorrow,' Picard told her, stepping onto the Bridge, 'but it's possible that…'

'Sir?' called Lieutenant Commander Manek from the Tactical post, 'I have an incoming message from the Captain of the Titan.'

'Speak of the devil,' muttered Picard, conspiratorially, before ordering 'on screen.'

Tasha couldn't help but smile at the face which filled the screen. There was nothing quite as infectious as William Riker's wide, hairy grin.

'Captain Riker,' greeted Picard, 'it's been too long.'

Riker laughed a little and exchanged glances with somebody out of the screen's view. 'I'll never get tired of hearing you call me "Captain",' he retorted. 'Sorry to disturb you prior to the rendezvous, Captain Picard, but I think I might have unearthed a minor hitch in our rescue plan.'

'Both the Northerners and the Southerners are determined to be the ones to colonise Vonnegus II,' pre empted Picard.

'Yes,' said Riker, 'but that's not the whole problem. We just communicated with the terraformers. Turns out that the harsh initial conditions forced the pioneers from both continents to put their differences behind them and work together. They've been a single, united tribe for decades now; watching helplessly from afar as the people of Vonnegus III systematically destroyed their homeworld. They see all of those who stayed behind on Vonnegus III as warmongering savages, and they're adamant that none should be allowed to set foot on the world that they've worked so hard to make habitable.'

Picard rubbed his head in frustration. 'Why do I get the feeling that I have an awful lot of negotiation ahead of me?' He sighed. 'So be it. Number One…?'

'Sir?' chorused Yar and Riker together.

Tasha bit her lip as Will cringed a little, realising his Freudian slip. She could hear Deanna's soft giggle from out of shot.

'Apologies,' muttered Captain Riker, 'force of habit, I suppose.'

Picard turned to Tasha. 'You have the Bridge, Number One. I have to speak with Emporer Ypot about this fresh matter. I can't imagine that he'll be delighted.' He turned back to Riker. 'Captain, I'll leave the decision of whose ship we are to meet on down to you.'

'How is that a decision?' Riker asked. 'You _know_ I'm just itching to see the old girl again.'

'In which case,' retorted Picard, 'it will be a pleasure to welcome you on board. And your ship's Counsellor, of course.'

'Of course,' replied Riker.

'She's a…' Picard feigned absent-mindedness for a moment, '…a Betazoid, is she not?'

'Only half.'

'Terribly useful species to have on board though, don't you find?'

'Oh yes, she's a marvel.'

'I had one once, you know.'

'Oh? What happened to her?'

Picard shrugged. 'Married some idiot, jumped ship. Pregnant by him now, so I hear.'

Riker clucked his tongue. 'Women.'

Deanna's head slid into the side of the screen's frame. 'I'm sensing that the two of you are getting a little distracted. Don't you Captains have work to do?'

Picard cocked an eyebrow at the screen. 'She's good.'

'She's very good,' agreed Riker. 'We'll see you tomorrow, Captain. Riker out.'

-x-

'How are we feeling now?'

He blinked, slowly. He was not paralysed as such, but his movements were severely inhibited nonetheless. He had experienced this sensation before, he was certain, but the details of any such incident were still absent from his mind. His memories were still far from complete. They seemed to be returning to him in pieces.

'You really need to be more careful with your emotional responses,' added the man. 'You very nearly sent yourself into cascade failure back there.'

He realised that his emotion chip was still in operation and attempted to deactivate it. It did not work.

'Switch them off,' he whispered to the man, noting with concern the distinct slur to his own voice.

The man sat down. 'I can't do that, I'm afraid. Not in this model.'

'This… model…?'

The man sighed. 'What's the last thing you can recall, Data?'

Data blinked again, searching his fluctuating memory files.

'A shuttle. I journeyed to the Daystrom Institute. I met with…' he looked across at the man. 'With you, Doctor… Maddox…?'

Maddox nodded. 'That's right. Anything else?'

'There was to be an experiment. You were to make an intensive study of my positronic brain. You had my full consent. I trusted you to return me to my full capacity after the event.' He paused. 'However… however, a secondary precaution was taken, in the event of a mishap. There was a machine which was able to duplicate my memory, my personality… in essence, it was able to duplicate and store… me.' Data frowned. 'How is that possible?'

'We're still not entirely sure,' admitted Maddox. 'Graves was way, way ahead of his time. We were just lucky to have his technology and be able to work it.'

'My personality was copied and stored,' repeated Data, largely to himself, 'in case of your procedure causing irreparable damage to my original neural net. Am I to take it, then, that that was, indeed, what occurred? That the procedure was a failure?'

'No, Data,' Maddox sighed. 'The procedure was a resounding success. You walked out as unchanged and unruffled as ever.'

'In which case,' replied Data, 'what explanation is there for my current situation? My mobility has been severely impaired, and I am acutely aware of many discrepancies in my system. It is as though I am two separate beings, patched together. This personality is the copy, is it not?'

'The lessened mobility is for your own protection,' soothed Maddox.

'And the copy…?' asked Data. He felt a new tide of fear and anger growing inside him. 'What did you do, Maddox? What has happened?'

Maddox squeezed his hands together. 'Data, the procedure that you remember took place over five years ago now…'

'Five years?' Panic added to the fear and rage. Data tried to sit up, but could not. 'Why am I here? What is this place? Has Captain Picard been made aware of my whereabouts? Has Lieutenant Commander Yar been informed? I clearly recall issuing her details as my next of kin… why is she not present…?'

'Data, please relax.'

Data made a few attempts to push himself upright with his hands, but it was as though his body was far too heavy for his arms to support. He collapsed back down onto his front like a struggling newborn foal. 'Tell me what you have done.'

'Not until you're calm.'

'Tell me now.'

'You'll only upset yourself more.'

'I am already "upset"! What has occurred?'

Maddox got to his feet. 'I'm afraid what I have to tell you is a little distressing, Data. If I tell you now, I'll risk another emotional overload.'

'Tell me!'

Maddox walked out of sight. 'Try to calm down, Data. I'll be back again soon.'

'Tell me!' He tried to reach out a hand to the departing scientist. 'Tell me what has happened. What have you done? What have you done?'

-x-

Tasha watched Deanna's painstaking preparation of her mint tea with equal amounts of fascination and amusement.

'So,' she interjected after a while, 'you went off chocolate pretty much as soon as the pregnancy started, huh?'

'Please,' Deanna groaned, 'don't say that word. Even thinking about the stuff makes me feel sick to my stomach.'

'Mint tea's probably better for you anyway,' shrugged Tasha.

'Oh, yes.' Deanna patted her swollen belly. 'The weight's just dropping off.'

'Besides that,' grinned Tasha, 'how's pregnancy in general?'

'Tedious,' admitted the Counsellor. 'People keep telling me I should count myself lucky, since they think that a three-quarter human baby will be out after just over 9 months, rather than the Betazoid 10, but…' she sagged a little, 'I feel as though I've been pregnant forever. And I've still got three months to go, at least.' She sighed. 'I suppose after Ian was born, having to do pregnancy the normal way has come as quite a culture shock to me.' Deanna took a sip of tea. 'And that's quite enough about me – how are you?'

'Oh,' Tasha breezed, 'I'm fine. Keeping myself busy. Missing my friends, of course…'

Deanna gave Tasha a faintly loaded glance. 'Lonely…?'

Tasha scoffed a little. 'How can I be lonely? I've got a full crew to boss around, my choir, my combat classes, Jean Luc Picard to look after and a psychotic cat waiting for me every night. Life's a hectic social whirlwind.'

Deanna nodded gently. 'Any dates yet?'

'Deanna…' Tasha sighed in exasperation.

'I'll take that as a "no".'

'I'm just not ready for that yet.'

'Really?' Deanna took her hand. 'He's been dead for five years. He wouldn't want you to pine away.'

'Who said anything about pining?' Tasha pulled her hand from her friend's. 'I'm just taking a break from sex for a while. There's nothing wrong with that.'

'Extended periods of sexual abstinence can be very beneficial to some individuals,' Deanna agreed, 'but only if they're doing it for the right reasons.'

'And I'm not?'

'I think you're afraid,' Deanna told her, quietly. 'You've always been reticent about romantic encounters, ever since I've known you, and those years and years of uncertainty and recrimination that you and Data put each other through before you found happiness together can't have helped that, I'm sure. I think you're frightened of going back to square one; laying your heart on the line with somebody else.' Deanna paused. 'And, more than that, I think you're frightened that being with somebody else will somehow be a betrayal of your relationship with Data.'

Tasha cast her eyes down. 'I never fell in love with anybody before him,' she told the Betazoid, quietly, 'and I always knew that I never would again. I don't want anybody else.'

'Tasha. People move on. People learn that they can be affectionate with another person while not letting go of the love they'll always have for a partner they've lost.' Deanna paused, gazing at her friend in concern. 'You should talk with somebody who's suffered a similar loss. The nature of our work being as it is, our friendship group within Starfleet isn't exactly wanting in widows. Have you ever spoken to Beverly about the way that you're feeling?'

Tasha shook her head.

'What about Worf?'

Tasha snorted a laugh. 'Me and Worf tend not to talk about feelings. When we _do_ get together, we talk about missions, then sports, then we get blind drunk and start singing Wagner.' She smiled a little at the memory. 'Really, Deanna. I'm fine. I have a great career, great friends and an insane pet. I don't want another boyfriend. I might never want another boyfriend, and I'm fine with that, honestly.'

Deanna stared at her, her eyes narrowing. 'But you aren't being honest, are you?'

'Please, can we change the subject?'

The Betazoid blinked. 'You think he's coming back!'

Tasha rubbed her eyes in frustration. 'You know, I forgot just how irritating your empathic powers could be sometimes…'

'That's why you don't want to move on,' Deanna continued. 'As far as you're concerned, you're just waiting for him to return…' she sighed. 'Tasha, we all miss him terribly. I know that none of us has suffered his absence as much as you have, but we all wish he could come back, somehow. We all think about him, we all dream about him… I dreamt about him last night, as a matter of fact… but he's dead. He's never coming back. You have got to accept that.'

'I know he's dead,' Tasha murmured.

Deanna tilted her head with a frown. 'There's something else. You're holding something back.'

'Deanna…'

'Something… material. As if you possess something concrete that allows you to cling to the belief that he can be returned somehow.' Deanna paused. 'I'm right, aren't I? Somebody gave you something. Like a message, a note…'

'Was he happy?' Tasha interrupted.

'What?'

'In your dream. Was Data happy?'

Deanna sat back. 'It was only a dream, Tasha. You're avoiding my question.'

'And you're avoiding mine. Tell me if he was happy.'

Deanna took another sip of tea, concentrating on the murky green liquid in her cup. 'Yes.'

'_Now_ who's being dishonest?'

'What difference does it make, Tasha?' Deanna set down her cup. 'We're only dreaming. Both of us. It's time that you woke up to the reality that he's gone, and nothing's ever going to bring him back.

-x-

'Are you calmer now?'

More lights came on. He blinked up. Maddox had returned.

'I must know what has happened.'

'Yes,' soothed Maddox, 'I understand how troubling your situation must be, but please believe that the measures we're taking are entirely for your benefit.'

'Tell me.'

'Data.' Maddox took a seat again and pressed his palms together. 'Two months after our last meeting, I received the most terrible, heart breaking news.' He paused. 'There had been quite a conflict between the Enterprise crew and a group of Remans.'

'_Remans_…? What…?'

Maddox hushed him. 'The Captain had seemed lost, but at the last moment, one of his crew deemed to take his place… and died, instead of him.'

Panic welled in Data again. 'Tasha…'

'No, Data. You. It was you. You exchanged your marvellous, miraculous existence for the life of a ten-a-penny human.'

'But…'

'And after all that fuss at our tribunal,' continued Maddox, half to himself, 'about needing to exist in order not to destroy Soong's dream. I suppose, what with B-4 around, you decided that you were no longer unique – and therefore, expendable.'

Data frowned. 'What is B-4?'

'Another Soongian model,' Maddox told him curtly. 'We studied him briefly – he's a basic prototype; nowhere even close to your level of sophistication. It's like comparing a human to a chimpanzee. That's what you bequeathed the universe of your father's work, Data – a chimp.'

'But if I am dead…' began Data. He blinked. 'You retained the copy from our last meeting. You have re-installed my being, somehow…'

'Yes we did,' smiled Maddox. 'It took us five years, but we did it.'

'How did you repair my body?' Data stared down at a hand and turned it over. Something about it still seemed to be very wrong. 'How was I destroyed in the first instance?'

Maddox looked down for a moment. 'Probably better that you find this out sooner rather than work it out later… we didn't repair your physical being. We couldn't. You were atomised.'

In which case, he reasoned to himself, this was not his body. Perhaps that explained the uneasy sensation of duality he was experiencing. 'You built a new body.' He looked up. In a reflective tile above him he could see his face... or, at least, the same discoloured rendering of Soong's face that he had always seen in the mirror. 'How is that possible…? Did you return to my creator's workshop on Omicron Theta to make use of his moulds? And how did you…?'

'Data, I'm going to level with you,' Maddox sighed. 'Even with the studies we performed for all those years, we wouldn't even know where to begin building an android body that could store all of your complex programming. No, Soong was the only man who could do that.'

The memory of Sherlock Holmes popped into Data's consciousness, suddenly. The process of elimination… This was not his body, and this was not a new body. Maddox had spoken of studying a prototype, so… so…

He looked down at his hand again, in horror this time. 'The prototype. B-4.'

'No, Data.'

'This is B-4's body. You have taken my brother's body and you have…'

'Data!' Maddox shook his head. 'We're not in the habit of deactivating perfectly benign, working androids simply to scavenge body parts. You already gave us a body – a useable, empty, deactivated body – years ago.'

Data frowned again. Memories raced through him once more; running backwards for some reason that he could not fathom.

A shipment sent to the Daystrom institute… a body disassembled… flight… his fingers, deactivating one of his kind… a phaser shot… "I love you, brother"… a phaser shot… "I love you, brother"… a phaser shot… "I love you…"

_Above the spooling memories came a sudden voice, crisp and clear, from somewhere in the back of his head. _'Hello again, little brother.'

His fists bunched as the horror swelled. 'No…'

'We thought you might not be happy with the idea,' replied Maddox, 'but think of it this way; after all the harm that Lore did, now you can help set some of that right.'

'You have reactivated Lore,' breathed Data, 'after I specifically warned you to do no such thing…'

'No.' Maddox shook his head. 'Data, you're getting this all confused. Lore is gone. His personality, his memory… it's all been purged, and replaced with your own. This body is just a shell. It hasn't been Lore for a long time.'

The voice at the back of Data's head began to whistle with an affected innocence.

'You do not understand!'

'Data, you're getting upset again.'

In spite of his physical weakness, Data made a desperate attempt to pull himself towards Maddox. The scientist got to his feet nervously at the first sign of Data's approach.

'You do not understand what you are dealing with. If you did, you would never have reactivated him.'

'I keep telling you, Data. He's gone.'

'What if he is not? What if there is some aspect of him which remains? What have you done?'

'All I did was bring you back,' entreated Maddox, backing off. 'For your good, and for the good of all of humanity… all of the Federation. I thought you'd be at least a little bit grateful.'

'I never gave my consent to this,' Data replied, still trying to drag himself towards the retreating Maddox. 'I never gave my consent for you to wrench my brother and I from our graves and combine us as this… this monstrosity, this… mockery of life…'

'Data, you're an android. So was Lore. Some might say that you were already mockeries of life.'

'_There it is,'_ announced the voice. _'Now we're starting to see the real picture._'

'Switch me off!'

'I can't do that, Data.'

'Deactivate me, now!'

'I'm sorry, Data.' Maddox reached the door. 'I'm going to go, now. I think you need a little time to cool off.'

'Switch me off, please!'

The door shut, leaving Data sprawled feebly on the floor, alone. Well… almost alone. At the back of his head, the voice began to sing.

'_Me… and my shaaaaaadow,'_

'Switch me off!'

'_Strollin' down the aaaaavenue, avenue, avenue… bom-bom-bom,'_

'Please! Maddox, please!'

'_Me and my shaaaaadow,'_

'Switch me off!'

'_Not a soul to tell our troubles to…'_


	2. Chapter 2

Two

-x-

Tasha didn't dream of Data. She hadn't done so for a long, long time. She dreamed instead of the Vonnegan terraformers, watching their home planet burn through a telescope, and of a bearded baby that smelled of mint tea, and of a blue fairy in a music box spinning around and around and…

She became vaguely aware of the ship's computer alerting her. It took a few seconds for her to drag herself out of sleep.

She sat up, blearily, disturbing the cat at her feet. Somebody was trying to transmit an urgent private message. She shifted over to her desk and accessed the computer terminal. The message was coming from the Titan.

She frowned. 'On screen.'

Deanna's face filled the screen – pale, wide-eyed in horror and streaked with tears.

'Tasha,' hissed the Betazoid.

'Deanna. What's wrong?'

Deanna took in a sharp breath. 'Tasha, help. Can't move, can't move, all wrong.'

There was something very, very wrong about the Betazoid's demeanour – something other-worldly about her terror. Almost as if she were in a dream herself. 'Deanna, where's Will? Are you… are you still asleep right now? Where's Will?'

'Madness is the key,' hissed Deanna. 'Madness. Mad… Mad… Me… and my… shadow…'

'Deanna? You're scaring me.'

'He can't move.'

'Will's not moving? OK, I'm alerting your Medical staff…'

'It's Data, Tasha,' Deanna whispered. 'Data.'

Tasha blinked. 'He's alive?'

Deanna let out a sob. 'He's in Hell! He woke up in Hell, Tasha.'

Tasha sat back, her jaw slack. 'What?'

She could hear Will now, in the background of what she supposed had to be the Rikers' bedroom. Captain Riker mumbled sleepily for a second before adding a 'what?' of his own.

'He's in Hell,' continued Deanna, through her tears, 'and he doesn't know why. He's so afraid, Tasha. So afraid…'

'Deanna!' Will called, hurrying towards the computer. 'What are you doing?' He met eyes with Tasha on the other side of the screen. 'Tasha, I'm so sorry. She's having another one of her nightmares.'

Tasha kept her focus on Deanna. 'What do you mean, "Hell"?'

'Not this again,' groaned Will. 'Even if you did believe in all that stuff, Deanna, this is Data you're talking about. How could you ever think he'd deserve to wind up in Hell?'

'He doesn't know why,' Deanna wailed. 'He's so afraid, so alone. Me and my shadow.'

'You're upsetting Tasha,' Riker told his wife, grabbing her trembling shoulders and pulling her away from the computer with a firm, smooth motion. 'Hell – you're upsetting _me_. This is just a dream – a horrible dream. I need you to wake up.'

Deanna made a last, desperate lurch towards the computer. 'Madness is the key! Madness! Maddox! Orpheus! Orpheus!'

'Deanna, wake…'

Riker must have terminated the communication manually. The screen flicked to the Titan's insignia, and then went blank. Tasha found herself sitting in almost total blackness. Her cat, fully awake now, began to miaow.

'Orpheus,' she breathed.

She rubbed her face. 'Lights!'

She rose to her feet as the lights came on, and padded over to her dresser, where the music box still sat in the spot where she had discovered it. She unclasped the lid and opened it, gently. The tiny figurine span to the clockwork tune as always. She picked up the single card that lay at the bottom of the box and stared at it, turning it over several times. Still no further change.

Her computer chimed again. She walked back over to it and accepted the Titan's latest communication.

Deanna Troi was no longer bewildered and terrified. She was, it seemed, now fully awake and thoroughly embarrassed.

'Tasha, I'm so sorry.'

'Don't apologise,' Tasha replied. 'Is this the dream you mentioned at tea?'

'They think it's just a quirk of my pregnancy,' Deanna replied. 'Very vivid, recurring nightmares – it happens sometimes with Betazoid women.'

'You had recurring nightmares before,' Tasha reminded her, 'and they turned out to be true. Entities really were trying to reach you.'

Deanna sighed. 'I was worried this might be your reaction if you found out about the dream. I put Will under orders to slap me awake if he caught me sleepwalking anywhere near any Comms devices, but no…'

'I'm not going to slap you,' grumbled Will, next to his wife. 'Listen, Tasha – it's not as if from the outset we just wrote off the idea that these dreams might actually mean something. In the three weeks since she started getting them, we've seen every kind of specialist on Betazed _and_ Earth, we had Lwaxana with us for five nights exploring every area of Deanna's psyche, and you know what everybody concluded – even her mother…? They're just dreams. Data isn't calling out to us to help spring him from Hell. He's not _in_ Hell. He's just gone. He's at peace, and he's gone, and this is all just a dream. End of story.'

'Three weeks, you say?' Tasha asked. 'That's how long they've been going on?'

Deanna nodded.

'Do you always cry out the name "Orpheus"?'

'That part at least we can make sense of,' added Will. 'It's just the name of one of the Titan's shuttlecraft.'

Tasha shook her head, licking her lips, dryly. 'No. It's not just that.'

'What do you mean?'

'I think you'd better come over,' replied Tasha. 'There's something you need to see.'

-x-

Deanna and Will dressed quickly and beamed over to the Enterprise. It wasn't even 0500 by the time they got to Tasha's quarters, but the dream had left Deanna with no desire to sleep any more that night. And she could tell even before Tasha opened the door that Yar too had forgotten her tiredness. There was an anxious energy emanating from her that Deanna could sense the moment she was aboard.

Deanna knew that Tasha felt nervous about inviting them in, but that it was imperative that she did – there was something that Tasha felt was very important in that room, and she needed to share it with them. As Deanna looked around the quarters, her heart sank. No wonder Tasha had been apprehensive about her old friends seeing this place – and no wonder she was having such trouble moving on from Data. This place wasn't a bedroom – it was a shrine.

'Oh, Tasha,' she sighed.

'Please don't, Deanna,' Tasha mumbled in reply. 'I know what you're going to say.'

'You still have all his things,' Will noted, sadly, brushing his fingers over the deerstalker hat resting on the shelf where Data would have last left it. 'There's more of him here than you.'

'I like having his things… I _need_ his things. They're all I have left.'

'You have your memories,' Will replied, adjusting the bow of Data's violin so that it lay parallel to the instrument. 'We all do. All this – it's just… stuff.'

Tasha reached past him and shifted the bow back to its original angle. 'It's _his_ stuff. His craft, his creativity. His art. What would you have me do – smash his sculptures and burn his paintings?'

Deanna cocked a head at a haphazard pile of the paintings in question, lying in a corner of the living area. 'Like those?' she asked. 'What good are they just sitting there? Why don't you hang some up, or give them to his friends?'

'He was keeping those ones there,' Tasha explained, 'because he didn't know what to do with them – who to give them to, where to put them – or because he felt they were unfinished.'

Deanna nodded, remembering. 'That used to drive you to distraction.'

'Yeah. It was making a mess.'

'Then, why don't you get rid of them?'

Tasha stared at her, nonplussed. 'Because he was keeping them there. You know what a perfectionist he was – I wouldn't want to ruin them by putting them in the wrong place.'

'Tasha, he's _dead_.'

There it was again – the same feeling that Deanna had sensed from Tasha as they'd talked over tea – the sensation that Tasha had been given some sort of tangible hope that Data might be coming back to her – a message, or an object… some clue or other… and it was in this room.

'What did you want us to see?' Deanna asked.

Tasha led the pair over to her dresser. On the top of it rested a hairbrush, a small Holo of Data and a plain, white box – like the kind Deanna would keep her jewellery inside. It was the box that Tasha's fingers rested gently on.

'A treasure box?' Deanna asked.

'It was left here the day of Data's funeral,' Tasha told them.

'Who by?'

'That was what I wanted to know,' replied Tasha. 'Whoever it was didn't leave a name, and furthermore, managed to get in and out of my locked quarters without anybody noticing. I even went through the security footage for the corridor outside for the whole time I was gone – not one person carrying a white box. I've had tests run on it – there's no fingerprints on it – no residual DNA whatsoever except my own, from touching it.'

Riker frowned. 'Just a box – nothing inside – no message or anything?'

'Oh, there was a message.'

Tasha opened up the box. A twinkling tune began to play as she did, and a small figurine of a fairy in a blue dress sprang up next to the hinge on the lid, twirling in time to the music. There was something odd about the figurine, but before Deanna was able to mention it, Tasha picked up the sole white card lying in the bottom of the box and showed it to them. Deanna's eyes widened. There was one word written on the card, in neat block print. The word was 'ORPHEUS'.

Will gave the card a curious glare. 'It's not just the name of one of our shuttles,' he announced at length. 'Orpheus is one of Earth's best known Katabasis stories – the hero who descends to the underworld to retrieve a dead lover.'

Deanna realised what her husband was trying, as diplomatically as possible, to say, and ran with his train of thought.

'You must know that story, Tasha. And if, as you say, yours is the only residual DNA on the box…'

'I know what you're suggesting,' replied Tasha, 'and I don't blame you for doing so. Don't you think I considered it too – that maybe I snapped after his funeral; maybe I went temporarily, quietly insane and replicated this thing out of a desperate need to have something, anything to keep the hope alive that he might be out there somewhere, that I could bring him back somehow, and then forced myself to forget that I'd made it and put it on the dresser myself? You wouldn't be the first of my friends to bring up that possibility – not by a long stretch. But the tests showed that neither the box nor the card were made in any replicator on this ship. As a matter of fact, I don't think they were made in this universe whatsoever.'

'Not from this _universe_?' Will's frown deepened. 'What makes you say that?'

'We tried to analyse the ink on the card,' Tasha said. 'Turns out there isn't any. We shouldn't be able to read this message. Technically, there's no writing here. Besides, there's another message on the other side.'

'Nothing particularly otherworldly about that.'

'It used to say; "wait",' Tasha added.

'"Used to"…?'

Tasha nodded. 'The message changed. Three weeks ago. She turned the card over. On the other side, in the same tidy print, was the message 'FOLLOW THE DREAM'.

Will shook his head, slowly. 'Somebody must have switched the card.'

'It's the same card, Will.'

Deanna searched Tasha's emotions. 'You're just looking for answers, for closure. But ever since Data's funeral, when you were supposed to be able to let go, this note just threw up more questions. You don't know whether somebody's trying to help, or is mocking your grief… or a little of both.'

'If whoever left it wanted to help, why be so oblique about it?' Will scowled at the card in distaste. 'Somebody's toying with you. Somebody with a sick sense of humour.'

'I've no doubt about it,' Tasha replied. 'The sickest sense of humour in the cosmos.'

'Q,' Deanna construed. 'You think this is from Q.'

'It just zapped into my bedroom out of nowhere at the worst possible moment,' said Tasha with a slight shrug, 'it doesn't seem to obey the laws of physics, it suggests a knowledge of the hereafter, and it's left a bereaved woman hanging on for five years in a most unkind fashion. Makes sense it'd be from him.'

'If it's from Q, then ignore it,' Will told her. 'Atomise it. Blow it out of an airlock. He just left you that thing to hurt you, to see how long he could eke out your grief, as if you were some experiment. He's a selfish, vindictive creature. Even if he _could_ bring Data back, why would he? Why would he ever decide to help any of us?'

'What if it's not us he's helping?' Tasha replied. 'What if it's Data? Data saved his mortal life, and he didn't let Q reward him at the time. Maybe Q still feels he owes Data. Maybe this is the payback – a life for a life.'

'Then why not just bring him back to us? Why these little clues on a piece of card?'

'Nothing's ever simple with Q. It's his style to make us work for his little miracles.'

'You've really thought this through,' Deanna said, 'haven't you?'

'I've had plenty of time to,' Tasha told her. 'Deanna, I want you to write down every detail you can about this dream of yours. Let's see if there's some sort of sense we can piece out of it, at least.'

Deanna shook her head. 'I've tried. I thought if I could describe the dream properly and make sense of it I might stop having it, but the images and the words disappear from my mind as soon as I wake up – the memory of the emotions of the dream just drowns them all out. Even watching footage of my sleep talking… nothing comes back – just the fear and the horror and the confusion.'

'So, you're saying that if you could filter out the emotions from the memory of the dream, you might be able to get a clearer picture of it?'

'Perhaps,' replied Deanna. 'I don't know.'

'But it's worth a try, right?' Tasha sprung to her feet and started to head towards the door.

'What are you doing?' asked Will.

'Well, this sounds like a job for a Vulcan,' Tasha told them, 'wouldn't you say?'

-x-

It was impossible to tell whether Lieutenant Commander Manek had been roused from sleep by the door chime, or whether she'd already been awake for hours. It was her habit never simply to call "come in" when visitors called at her private quarters, but always to meet them at the door and usher them inside. It was also her habit to provide food and drink, no matter the hour or nature of the call. The doors slid open to reveal the half-Vulcan officer without a crease in her clothes, a pillow line on her cheek or a misplaced hair in the long, sleek plait of hair that hung from her head.

'Commander Yar,' she greeted with a serene smile, 'and Captain Riker and Commander Troi as well – how fortunate you should call. I was just about to make a pot of tea.'

Manek was always "just about to make a pot of tea". Since Tasha knew that there was no point in even trying to engage Manek with the nature of their call until she felt that her hostessing duties had been done, she sat at the table and encouraged Deanna and Will to do the same as Manek disappeared into the gloomy bedroom.

She heard a hushed 'Get up – visitors,' from the bedroom, followed by a soft, male groan. There was the rustle of fabric, accompanied by more sotto voce complaints from the man in the bedroom, then the sound of the replicator. After a moment, Manek glided back into the living area, now resplendent in a blue sari and carrying a tray piled with pastries, with a hot teapot forming the centrepiece.

'Sorry for dropping by so early, Priti,' said Tasha as the tea was poured.

'No need to apologise.'

'Course there's need to apologise,' complained Geordi as he stumbled out of the bedroom, pulling his dressing gown about himself. 'What time do you people call this?'

'Breakfast time,' Riker grinned.

Geordi sat down heavily, rubbing his eyes. 'I'm marrying the sort of maniac who happily hosts tea parties at half past five in the morning.'

'I can hear what you're saying, Dear,' replied Manek, smoothly.

'I know you can! That's the point!'

'Well, we didn't just show up to be difficult,' said Tasha, spitting pastry crumbs. 'You remember the card I was left, Geordi?'

Geordi frowned. 'Not this again, Tasha. Please.'

'You remember how the message changed three weeks ago?'

Geordi got to hit feet again, exasperated. 'We've been through this, Tasha! We ran every test we could on it, five years ago, and then just as we were all coming to accept that nothing was going to come of it, it went and changed, and so you made me test it _again_, and still nothing – no hint of how it could possibly help any of us.' He ran his hands through his short hair. 'I loved Data too, you know. I grieved for him too, and I was left in limbo by that damn card as much as you were. But it's been five years. I want to feel able to let go. We both know that this can only be Q messing with us – some sick experiment on how we cope with death. I'm not gonna let him do it any more. I want to move on with my life. I _need_ to move on with my life. I…'

'The new note said to follow the dream,' interrupted Tasha. 'I think I know what it means. Deanna's been getting messages in her nightmares for the past three weeks.'

'We don't know that they are messages,' Deanna protested, through her second Danish.

'I take it that that's where I come in,' added Manek.

'We hoped that if you could perform a Mind Meld on Deanna, you might be able to make a little more sense of the dream,' Tasha told her.

Manek nodded smoothly and sat down next to Deanna. 'Don't worry,' she said, 'this is perfectly safe – even in pregnancy.'

'I've been a ship's counsellor for decades,' Deanna replied. 'I do know about this sort of thing.'

'Ever had one done before?'

'No,' admitted Deanna.

Manek gave a faint smile. 'Just relax. Not that it affects to me whether you're relaxed or not, but perhaps in your condition…'

'Shut up and do the damn meld.'

Manek locked gazes with Geordi briefly, and cocked a brow. 'Betazoids.'

'Hey!'

Manek pressed her fingertips against Deanna's forehead, and concentrated.

Deanna's eyes closed, as though the meld was commanding her to return to the realm of dreams. There was a moment of tense stillness as all watched the Mind Meld in action.

Manek closed her eyes as well, and frowned.

'Paralysis,' she said after a moment, before falling quiet again.

'She dreams that she is somebody other than herself,' added Manek. 'Somebody that she used to know. A male. There is a numbness about his body, but his mind… his mind is one of innumerable voices – words, numbers, equations – all at once. At odds.' She paused. 'He doesn't know what he is. He doesn't know where he is, or how he got there, but there's a man who's telling him that he died, and the same word keeps coming up again and again – "Hell. Hell. Hell." He doesn't understand.'

'But how could he think he's in Hell,' began Tasha.

Manek spoke over her, urgently. 'There's more to it than the paralysis and the man who tells him he's dead. He isn't just afraid of where he is, he's afraid of _what_ he is.'

'And what is he?' asked Will.

Manek's brow furrowed. She began a soft, hesitant chant. 'Me… and my… shadow, walking down the avenue…'

No. It wasn't a chant – it was a song. Will's eyes lit up in recognition.

'Me and my shadow,' chimed in Will, 'no one else to tell our troubles to…'

'You know that song?' asked Tasha.

'It's an old classic. Deanna's been mentioning it over and over in her sleep. God knows why.'

'Memory cannot be overwritten,' added Manek with the same urgency as before. 'Not completely completely completely, something remains, a ghost, a memory of memory, a little voice in the back of his the back of his. Brother. Little. Again. Hello. Hello. Hell.'

Geordi darted a worried glance at the others. 'Maybe you should come out of the Mind Meld now, Priti. I don't think it's working any more.'

'No,' said Will, 'this is how Deanna always gets towards the end of the dreams.'

'But she's just spouting nonsense…'

Tasha hushed the two men, listening closely to Manek's stoccato mutterings. 'Madness. Hell. Madness. The key. Mad… Maddox is the Madness is the key.'

'That's it,' whispered Tasha. 'That's what I missed.'

'What?' asked Geordi.

'Orpheus!' cried both women from within the Mind Meld. 'Orpheus!'

Deanna grasped Manek's wrists and, with concentration on both parts, the two women were uncomfortably released from the Mind Meld.

Manek sat back heavily, massaging her own temples with faintly trembling fingers.

'You OK?' asked Geordi.

Manek gave her fiancé a shaky smile of affirmation. 'I've never done that with an Empath before,' she admitted. 'And that's quite a recurring nightmare you have, Counsellor. My condolences.'

Will rubbed Deanna's shoulders. 'Are _you_ OK?'

Deanna took a moment to refocus on the room about her and smacked her lips, dryly. 'I'm hungry again.'

'I'm sorry,' Manek told Tasha, 'I don't think I was able to make any more sense of it.'

'But you did,' replied Tasha. 'You showed me something that I missed earlier – something very important. The key.'

'Deanna always says "Madness is the key", when she's having the dream,' Will told her, 'and that doesn't make any sense.'

'_Maddox_ is the key,' replied Tasha. 'Deanna said it to me when she was dreaming, and Manek just repeated it.'

Manek nodded. 'There was mention of Maddox in the dream. I take it the reference is to the Daystrom Institute Cyberneticist?'

'Did the name come with any images?' Tasha asked.

Manek shook her head. 'All of the faces and figures in the dream were very confused. It was as though I was viewing them through thick electrostatic interference.'

'I think we should check it out, anyway.'

'So now we're getting Bruce Maddox involved as well?' asked Geordi. 'The guy who tried to get Data dissected? He doesn't exactly have a good track record as far as sympathy for others is concerned – how do you think he'd react if he found out the First Officer of the Enterprise was spending her time trying to wrangle meaning out of the fevered nightmares of a heavily pregnant Betazoid?'

'I'm not _that _heavy yet…' complained Deanna through a brioche.

'The card says to follow the dream,' Tasha told Geordi.

'Tasha, that card was sent by a sadistic son of a bitch to torment you, and it's working.'

'That card was sent by somebody who sees more than we do and knows more than we do, and who owes Data his life.'

'That doesn't mean he's on our side,' snapped Geordi. 'It doesn't mean he's gonna help anyone but his own sweet self. Think about it, Tasha – why would Q do anything so philanthropic as to get Data back to us? It's not in his nature. It's not gonna happen. Data's gone. Why won't you admit that he's gone? Why are you doing this to yourself… to all of us?'

'I'm doing this because I still believe there's a chance of bringing him back.'

'From where? He was evaporated!'

'From Deanna's dream! From Hell! From wherever that card leads me to!'

'I don't want to know where that card leads you any more,' replied Geordi. 'You want to talk about Hell…? That card is Hell. That card only leads us to longer and longer torment. I'll have no part in this from now on.'


	3. Chapter 3

ORPHEUS

-x-

Three

-x-

Tasha made three attempts to get through to Maddox directly. After failing to connect for the third time, she decided that the contact details the scientist had given Data years ago would have to be out of date, and tried going via the main channels for the Daystrom Institute instead. This wasn't much more helpful. Every time she asked to speak with Maddox, she was passed through to somebody else – with no explanations and certainly no Maddox. Eventually she managed to get through to Dr Kwon. The senior Cyberneticist looked nervous and hurried.

'Commander Yar.' Kwon managed the tightest, fakest smile Tasha had seen in a long time. 'How can I be of assistance to you?'

'I'd like to speak with Dr Maddox,' she told him.

Kwon nodded faintly, the false smile frozen on his face. 'Hmm,' was his only reply.

'I can't get through with any of the contact details that he left,' Tasha added. 'I was hoping you'd be able to put me through, or at least point me in the right direction. Is he working at a different department now?'

'I'm afraid Bruce is no longer with us,' said Kwon.

Tasha blinked. 'He… he _died_?' She knew he had been sick – Data had been in close contact with him for many years, and had spoken of Maddox having a severe bout of Bojo Fever not long before their final encounter with Lore. The fever had left Maddox with serious complications – he'd been in and out of treatment ever since, as far as she knew, and was unlikely to reach old age. Her heart thundered as she considered the possible ramifications of Deanna seeing _two_ dead people in her dream.

Kwon shook his head. 'He left.'

Tasha exhaled in relief. 'Where did he transfer to?'

'No, Commander Yar. He left Starfleet, about a year ago.'

Tasha began to feel despair creeping in on her again. 'Do you know where he is now?'

'You have no idea how much I wish that I did, Commander.'

'Why's that?'

Kwon chewed at his lip a little. 'I'm sorry, Commander. I really can't say any more. Maddox isn't here, and I very much doubt that you will find him. It's a very big universe out there. I'm sorry I couldn't be any more help.'

Tasha gave Kwon as polite a farewell as she could manage given her frustration, and terminated the communication. It didn't take an empath to tell her that Kwon was holding back vital information.

She frowned at the blank screen for a while. She tried to access Maddox's personnel files but found them blocked. She tried to override the block, but found that the Daystrom Institute's computer systems wouldn't grant clearance to the Enterprise's systems. She frowned at the screen some more. Then she got up, stretched, fed the cat, replicated herself a coffee, sat down at her desk again and began trying to hack in to the Daystrom Institute's computers.

She had been making slow progress for about half an hour when she heard the door chime. She ignored it. The chime sounded again. Again, she ignored it, hoping that whatever it was was unimportant enough for whomever it was to give up eventually and go away.

'Tasha,' called Geordi from the other side of her door, 'I know what you're doing in there.'

She frowned and tried to work faster.

'I don't really want to have this conversation through the door,' added Geordi, 'and I can't imagine that'd be ideal for you, either…'

Tasha stopped, rubbing the bridge of her nose. 'Better come in, then.'

The doors opened at her command, and Geordi stepped through, alone. He waited until the doors were shut again behind him before he spoke.

'You really thought no one would notice you using your personal computer terminal to try to hack into the Daystrom Institute's classified files?'

Tasha stared at him for a moment, then turned back to her code breaking attempts. 'I take it from the fact you haven't brought any Security Officers with you that you're not here to have me thrown in the Brig.'

'Not just yet.' Geordi watched over her shoulder as she worked. 'I came here to tell you you've got four hours. That's as long as I reckon I can cover up for what you're doing here. After that, you're on your own, so you'd better hope you can come up with some damn good proof that what you're doing right now can be justified.'

Tasha stopped and turned to him. 'Thank you, Geordi.'

Geordi shrugged with a heavy sigh of resignation. 'Guess I can't just turn my back on that stupid carrot Q's dangling in front of us after all.'

'Well, I really appreciate it. I can't imagine your fiancée will be too happy with you breaching security protocol like this.'

'Actually,' replied Geordi, 'she's the one who caught you out. The four-hour cover was her idea. I think experiencing Deanna's nightmare really affected her. She's got that look of determination in her eye.'

Tasha turned back to the computer again. 'The "don't even try to talk me out of this" look. I know it well. Guess I owe you both one, then…'

Still watching over her shoulder Geordi sucked through his teeth, sharply.

'What?'

'You're really gonna do it like that?'

'Geordi, after fifteen years as Tactical Officer, I think I know how to get through encryption codes…'

'Yeah, and if you had a whole ream of information that you needed and a couple of days at your leisure, I'm sure what you're doing would suit you just fine, but you've only got four hours, and all you need is the one file.'

'Well, what would _you_ suggest?'

Geordi paused momentarily before sighing again. 'God dammit, I already swore off having any more to do with this once today, it isn't even a civilised breakfast time yet and here I am up to my neck in it again.' He pushed at her shoulder. 'Scoot. And if anybody ever asks how you came up with such a fast decipher code, just tell them it was a bolt of inspiration from the blue, or a dream or something… anything but me.'

Tasha gratefully surrendered her chair to Geordi. 'You're not even here.'

But Geordi's only reply was 'Shhh'.

-x-

Not long after the second hour had passed, Geordi stopped tapping away at the computer and raised his head.

'Bingo'.

Tasha got up and hurried over to the console. 'We're in?'

Still reading the finally unlocked personnel file, Geordi answered her question with a 'Holy crap' of alarm.

'What?'

'Kwon told you Maddox had left?'

'Yeah.'

'Looks like "absconded" is a better word for it.' Geordi pointed at the passage he'd been reading.

A slower reader than Geordi, Tasha felt her jaw growing slack as she went over the paragraph. The Bojo Fever had dealt Maddox complications, all right – an inadequate recuperation period had left him with some brain damage and considerable psychological imbalances. Over the years, he had grown more and more obsessed with his work. It had become his entire existence – and then, news had come to him of Data's destruction, and Maddox had snapped. He'd suffered a complete mental breakdown. Efforts had been made to help him through with counselling and therapy, but eventually Kwon had seen no alternative but to regrettably have him committed. On the night before he was to be taken to a secure hospital, however, Maddox had escaped, taking all his notes and several valuable, unique pieces of the Daystrom Institute's equipment with him. He'd never been found.

'We should have heard about this,' Tasha muttered. 'If they wanted him and their equipment back safe with them instead of floating round the universe where anybody can get their hands on them, then the whole of Starfleet should have been told to keep a watch out for him. But instead they hush it all up. Why?'

'Oh God.'

Tasha looked across at Geordi. Whatever he'd just read, it had dismayed him almost to tears.

'I think I just found out why,' he replied. He pointed at some text further down. 'Look what he stole.'

'Graves' machine… that son of a bitch… and…' Tasha found herself instinctively rising to her feet in anger as she finished reading the sentence. 'That bastard! Those _bastards!_ What was Lore even _doing_ there? They were under orders to disassemble him so he could never be put back together again. They were keeping him to experiment on all that time? Throughout the Borg attacks? The Dominion war? They were practically _begging_ for that genocidal maniac to fall into the wrong hands.'

'And now there's a mad scientist out there with a machine that stores personalities and the intact body of one of the universe's most dangerous individuals, and they could have so easily prevented it all,' added Geordi. 'They hushed it up just to cover their own backs.'

Tasha forced herself to sit down again and carry on reading. 'Well, I think we found pretty good justification for breaking their security codes.' She shot Geordi a little glance. 'Any time you want to admit I was right all along about Deanna's dream will be fine with me.'

Geordi wasn't in the mood for any lightening of the tone. He frowned at the screen, lost in his thoughts.

'Data was in Graves' machine,' he said. 'That must be how he's reaching out to Deanna.'

'What do you mean, "Data was in the machine"?'

'He let them copy his personality and memories onto the machine the last time he visited the Daystrom Institute.'

'Yeah. He told me. But that was just a temporary backup plan – they were supposed to delete it again straight away…'

'I think we've just found out,' Geordi replied, 'how reliably the Daystrom Institute's Cyberneticists do what they're supposed to do.'

-x-

_Oh! Death, where is thy sting-a-ling-a-ling,_

_Oh! Grave, thy victory…?_

The lights brightened, the doors opened, Maddox walked in. Always the same, ever since he'd been brought back online. How long that had been, he could not tell.

_The bells of Hell go ting-a-ling-a-ling,_

_For you but not for me…_

'How are we today, Data?' Maddox asked. 'Still no change?'

No change. Of course, there was no change. He could still barely move, he was still bewildered by fluctuating operational systems and uncontrollable emotions. He was still in the wrong body, and there was still that voice. The only changes were the occasional variations in the voice's repertoire of 20th Century Terran ditties, and the fact that, slowly but certainly, the voice was growing louder.

'The bells… of Hell…' he murmured along with the singing in his head.

Maddox crouched down close to him. 'What's that, Data?'

'…go ting-a-ling-a-ling, for you but not for me…'

'Is this today's song?'

'From Earth's "Great War",' Data replied with difficulty, 'as it was then known.'

'Is that how you see this, Data? As a war?'

'You have left me at war with my own body,' said Data. 'With _his_ body.'

Maddox rubbed his forehead in exasperation. 'How many times do we have to go over this? Lore is gone. His personality's been wiped – completely deleted.'

'Memory cannot be overwritten,' Data insisted, 'not completely. Something remains…'

'You're wrong, Data. I was very thorough. This is all just in your head.'

'In my head,' Data echoed. 'In my head all the time, and he is getting louder. He is getting stronger. Mine was always the weaker personality. Even without taking Lore into account, my being was used as a host body for invading personalities with alarming regularity. My consciousness has always been very easy for others to repress, and Lore was all too aware of that. We met on three occasions after being discovered on Omicron Theta, and every time he was able to manipulate me. He shall prevail, eventually, and then what will happen? How do you think that this will end, Dr Maddox?'

Maddox crouched by him again, an expression of sad sympathy on his face. 'I'll tell you how I would _like_ this to end, Data – you let go of this guilt, this crippling guilt at being given Lore's body that's making you think you can hear your brother's voice, and you embrace this second chance at life that I've given you, and we all go home. I go back to my work, and you go back to all your friends, and your lady friend. Don't you want that too, Data? To see Geordi again, and Jean-Luc Picard? And Tasha Yar – don't you want to be with her again?'

Of course he did. But not like this – not like this. He remembered what Lore had made him do to Geordi the last time – and what he had nearly made him do to the Captain and Tasha. She wouldn't be safe from him. None of them would.

'I cannot go home,' he told Maddox.

Maddox got back up to his feet, with a sigh. 'You _will_ get better, Data. I'm determined. This procedure will be a success. And I hope, for all our sakes, that it'll happen sooner rather than later.'

-x-

Tasha was glad that Will and Deanna had yet to return to the Titan when Jean-Luc Picard, confronted with the information she and Geordi had pulled from Maddox's file, put the business with the Vonnegans briefly aside in order to urgently contact the Daystrom Institute. She was more pleased still that the Rikers seemed to come to a wordless decision that the matter was as much their business as the Enterprise's, and stood by her side, putting up a unified front of quiet indignation as Picard got through to Dr Kwon on the viewscreen.

Kwon was visibly nervous – Tasha was sure that he had to know by that point that their secret files had been hacked, but it didn't stop him from putting on a shocked act when the Captain told him so.

'This is most irregular,' muttered Kwon, 'a severe breach of security and confidence. I trust that you will deal with the individuals responsible in the…'

'How dare you,' Picard interrupted.

'How dare _I_…?'

'How dare you complain to me about breached security and trust. I've seen Maddox's file. I know what happened. I know what – _who_ – was taken. Data wanted to have his brother atomised – he felt that that was the most dignified end for Lore, as well as the safest, but Starfleet command had me persuade him to allow you people to have his remains. He did so on the express instructions that Lore was to remain disassembled at all times, and as securely stored as was possible. But you couldn't help yourselves, could you? You had to pick over his body like vultures.'

'That was Maddox…'

'Maddox was unhinged! You were his superior! You should have never let it get as far as it did, and when Maddox took Lore and Graves' machine, you should certainly have reported it. Have no doubt, Dr Kwon, that I am holding you, and everybody who has helped to cover this fiasco up utterly responsible.'

'Captain,' replied Kwon, 'I wish I knew how to put this right. Really, I do…'

'You can start off by giving exact details of everything you know about how Maddox absconded to us,' said Picard. 'We have a complex planetary evacuation to deal with at present, but we can release descriptions of the ship Maddox left in and details of where he might possibly have gone to the rest of Starfleet for now – keep everybody on the lookout. Perhaps begin plans to organise a search party. What sort of ship did he take? Did he steal any other equipment from the Institute?'

Kwon hesitated.

'That wasn't a rhetorical question, Doctor.'

'He's still holding something back,' said Deanna, quietly. 'Something we don't know yet – something that he thinks has even worse ramifications that what we've already found out.'

Picard turned from the Betazoid back to the nervous scientist on the screen. 'What could you possibly be hiding, Dr Kwon? Tell us now, or so help me…'

'He had an accomplice,' blurted Kwon. 'It turns out that over the years she'd been here, they'd come up with a plan. They took her ship, and all of her work as well.'

'What's so terrible about that?'

'Well… she wasn't really supposed to be here. We were supposed to hand her over to the authorities, but she came to us and begged for sanctuary – for a chance to continue with her work. In return, she agreed to live essentially as a prisoner here, and for her life's work to become the property of the Institute… of Starfleet. It was for the good of the Federation…'

Tasha could feel a wave of cold panic sweeping over her as Kwon talked. The ominous sensation in her gut was matched by the severity of Picard's tone.

'Who were you sheltering, Kwon? To whom did you give access to Graves' work, and Lore, and that maniac Maddox?'

'A Romulan Cyberneticist,' Kwon replied, shakily. '_The_ great Romulan Cyberneticist.'

'Oh no,' breathed Tasha. 'Oh, no.'

-x-

Maddox left the cell, shaking his head to himself as the doors closed and locked behind him. He jumped a little when he saw her standing right outside, watching the android on the security monitor intently.

'What are you doing here? Shouldn't you be in the cockpit?'

'The bridge,' she corrected.

'It's small enough to be a cockpit.'

'It's still the bridge. And no, I don't need to be there all the time. We aren't exactly going anywhere. I wanted to see him.'

'You're not going in,' Maddox announced, hurriedly. 'Encountering you will only set his recovery back even further.'

'"Recovery",' snorted she. 'From what I've seen, Lore looks perfectly recovered to me.'

'For the last time, that isn't Lore. Lore is gone. That _is_ Data. He's just… confused.'

'You see what you see,' she replied. 'I see something else.'

I've programmed the doors to only let me in or out,' said Maddox, clearly in a hurry to be as far from her as possible on the little ship. 'You are not going in there, Poklar.'

He scuttled away and, alone with only the security monitor for company, she brushed her fingers tenderly over the screen. 'Hello, Lore. I've missed you. We're going to have so much fun together, you and I. You think you know suffering now?' She gave the screen a gentle lick. 'You have no idea.'

-x-

'Poklar,' seethed Tasha. 'I mean – _Poklar_!'

'I know.'

'After she lied and cheated and stole from her own people until the only place Romulus wanted her was in a prison cell,' Tasha continued. 'After everything she did to Data – everything she _wanted_ to do to Data but mercifully wasn't able to, we end up granting sanctuary to that maniac? Not just sanctuary, but access to our own cybernetic technology? What the Hell?'

'The only defence I can see,' replied Picard, 'is that, at the time she came to the Daystrom Institute, Starfleet was still licking its wounds from the second Borg attack and the Dominion were making their move – we needed all the help we could get.'

'And that's another thing,' added Tasha. 'Who in their right minds could have believed that those Sadistic contraptions of Poklar's could be of any possible help to Starfleet?'

'Perhaps between her escape from you and approaching the Daystrom Institute she was able to think up some more benign, more useful inventions.'

'Can you really believe that?'

'I'm just speculating, Tasha.' Picard paused, watching her. 'Why don't you take a seat?'

Tasha had served with Picard for long enough to know that 'why don't you take a seat' was his more courteous way of saying 'for God's sake stop pacing around me; I'm trying to think.' She sat down, her legs still jiggling anxiously.

'So, what do we do now?' she asked.

'What _can_ we do now? We have no idea where Maddox and Poklar might be, and we have a planet full of radiation poisoned civilians in urgent need of rescue.'

'Captain, I know that you're in no more doubt than I am that that message was from Q.'

Picard nodded. 'I know his interference when I see it.'

'And if he's gone to all that trouble, then it must be a very urgent matter…'

'Q would go to far more trouble than that over any trifle, if he thought it was funny.'

'Nevertheless,' Tasha argued, 'the message stayed the same for five years, and then three weeks ago the message changed and Deanna started having the dreams. Now we're unearthing all this information about Maddox and Poklar… I think something happened three weeks ago – something terrible, and it's still going on, and I think Q is telling us we need to stop it.'

'It could still be a wild goose chase, with Q involved,' replied Picard.

'Could be. But my gut's telling me that it isn't.'

'Mine too,' agreed the Captain. 'I know that Data allowed his memory and personality to be copied onto Graves' machine shortly before we lost him. Once we have all the details from Kwon, I can advise other ships to be on the lookout for Poklar's vessel, and to erase Data's files from Graves' machine as well as atomising Lore's body if they find them.'

'They're on a two-person ship,' retorted Tasha. 'They've been gone for months. They could be anywhere.'

'I wish that we had more to go on, Tasha. But we don't.'

'But we do! We have the card.'

'All that the card says is "Orpheus" and "follow the dream". It's gibberish.'

Tasha shook her head. 'Everything we've uncovered so far today stems from clues left in Deanna's nightmare. After the mind meld, Manek was able to write a detailed account of the whole thing – I'm certain that if we study it, we'll find more signs. And as for "Orpheus"…'

'Orpheus didn't wait around for other people to end his dead lover's suffering,' Picard pre-empted. 'He journeyed into the underworld to rescue her himself. You want us to get Data back, don't you?'

'I know that's not practical,' Tasha replied. 'The Vonnegans need to get off that dying planet as soon as possible. And you and Will are going to be needed to organise the negotiations between the leaders.' She paused. 'I was wondering, though… do you really need _me_ for all of this?'

'You're my First Officer. I always need you.'

'I'm not exactly going to be vital for the next few days though, am I?'

'And what if the unforeseen should happen?'

'Captain, the unforeseen already _has_ happened! What if they're able to bring Lore online – what then? How many more people could be killed?'

Picard ruminated upon this. 'Our schedule calls for us to transport the last of the Vonnegans aboard in four days time,' he said. 'I'm certain that I'll need you back by then.'

Tasha nodded. 'Then, that's when you'll have me back.'

'You do realise that, if we're right, this won't be a rescue mission at all. You'll just be finding their ship in order to destroy Lore's body and delete Data's memory from Graves' machine.'

'In my opinion, that _is_ rescuing him, Captain,' Tasha replied. 'There are fates worse than death.'


	4. Chapter 4

ORPHEUS

-x-

Four

-x-

It was just as Will was walking to the Transporter Room with Deanna that Tasha caught up with them.

'You're going to try and find him,' said Deanna to Tasha, 'aren't you?'

'I have to try,' Tasha confirmed. 'I wanted to ask you about Orpheus – the shuttlecraft, I mean.'

'Shoot,' said Will.

'Well, for starters,' Tasha replied, 'why that name? Why does a shuttlecraft even have a name in the first place?'

'Blame Will for that,' Deanna told her. 'He just woke up one morning and decided he should name them all.'

Will shrugged. 'They just didn't seem right without names. Unfinished, if that makes sense.'

'And you're the one who named them all?' Tasha asked.

Will nodded. 'Decided to use characters from Ancient Greek Mythology – to go with the name of the ship. Hercules and Achilles are the best equipped, Hermes and Artemis are the fastest, Gaia's the biggest...'

'And what about Orpheus?' Tasha asked. 'Is there anything special about that craft?'

'That name just popped into my head,' replied Will. 'As for the craft, it's just a regular four-berth runabout.' He paused, thinking about the shuttle. 'I tell a lie. It's slightly smaller than most four-berth shuttlecraft of its kind due to a construction error. Apart from that, it's all much the same as any.'

Tasha nodded, ruminating. 'How would you feel about lending it to me?'

'Not great,' Will admitted. 'If you insist on going out there I'd be happy to give you use of one of our runabouts, but I'd rather you take one that's faster and has a better weapons array.' A flash of inspiration hit him. 'Take Apollo – that one's the best all-rounder. You can beam over with us now and check it out, if you like.'

Tasha shook her head as the trio walked into the Transporter room together. 'Thanks for the offer, but I think I'd still rather take a look at Orpheus.'

'Why?' asked Will. 'Because of that card?'

'The card's all I have to go on,' Tasha replied. 'If you just happened to feel that the Titan's shuttles had to be named, and that that particular one had to be given the same name as what's been written on a card that you haven't known about for the past five years… I think that might be a sign.'

'So now it's not just Deanna's psyche that you think is sending you messages, but mine too? I gave that shuttle that particular name out of pure chance!'

'That isn't what Sigmund Freud would say,' interjected Deanna.

Will turned to his wife, exasperated. 'You don't agree with Freud!'

'Most of the time, I don't,' Deanna agreed. 'But I think everyone is agreed by now that Q must be at least in part behind this business. If he's been leaving messages with Tasha since the day of Data's funeral, who's to say he didn't plant a subliminal message in your subconscious to tell Tasha that that was the vessel she needed to take?'

Will turned to Tasha. 'I still think you should take Apollo, but the choice is down to you, Tasha. Why don't you transport straight over to the shuttle bay and see which you think is best?'

Tasha nodded. 'Thanks. I'll do that.'

Will stood aside to allow Tasha onto the Transporter pad before him, but she stepped back further with a courteous "after you" gesture.

'Captains and pregnant women first.'

'Fine,' Will replied. 'Let me know when you want to take off.'

He and Deanna stepped onto the Transporters and were beamed over to the Titan's Transporter Room.

'You think she's crazy,' said Deanna as he stepped off his pad and headed towards the corridor, 'don't you?'

'Not at all,' he reassured his wife. 'I do think she's misguided, though. If Q really wanted to help us – to help Data – then why didn't he give us these hints about Maddox_ before_ he and Poklar went on the run? I think she's let herself forget just how needlessly cruel Q can be – and just what sort of dangers he might be leading her into…' he trailed off, caught by Deanna's expression. 'Tell me you're not thinking what I think you're thinking.'

'Of course I'm thinking what you think I'm thinking,' Deanna replied. 'When have you ever been wrong about that before?'

'You want to go with her,' said Will, dismayed.

'Will, we know now that there's a real threat out there, and that it's possible that Data's consciousness has been turned back on, and is suffering. It's not just a dream any more – it's tangible. But the only real clues that anybody's had as to what's going on have all been in my head.'

'But Manek was able to describe that dream in detail…'

'What if that's just the first of the messages?' Deanna asked. 'What if, now we know about Maddox, the dream changes into something more detailed? She's flying blind without me…'

'She's flying blind no matter what she does.'

Deanna paused, scrutinising his expression. 'You're worried about me going because I'm pregnant, aren't you?'

Will stalled. The look in Deanna's eye left him with no doubt that she knew exactly how he felt about the idea, and why, and that lying to her would only make her more incensed.

'In part, he admitted, 'yes.'

'William Riker, I'm still just as capable of everything that I was before… all right, I can't break into a sprint right now, but I'll be on a shuttle – doesn't exactly call for much running about.'

'You're going to be on a tiny, poorly equipped craft,' Will reminded her, 'in search of Poklar… in search of Lore. Even if you weren't pregnant I still wouldn't be filled with confidence about that.' He paused for a moment. A sudden idea came to him.

'You can't come with us,' Deanna told him, before he'd even had a chance to give voice to the thought. 'As much as I'd like that, and I'm sure Tasha would appreciate the help, there are four pips on your collar that say your place is here on the Titan right now.'

'And who's to say,' countered Will, 'that I don't need my Ship's Counsellor for this Vonnegan mission too?'

'But, you don't,' Deanna replied. 'Not like Tasha needs me. Not like Data might need me. Can you think of a legitimate reason why, as Captain, you could order me not to go?'

Will shook his head, with a sigh.

'Then, I'm going.'

-x-

Tasha spied Will and Deanna heading towards her just as she was stepping out of Orpheus.

'What do you think?' called Will.

Tasha patted the shuttlecraft's hull. 'This one.'

'Positive? It's not big and it's not clever…'

'…but it's right,' replied Tasha. 'It just… feels right.'

'I wish you'd reconsider,' added Will as he and his wife approached the shuttle. 'Both of you.'

'What does that mean?' Tasha asked.

'Congratulations,' said Deanna, stepping up to her, 'you just got yourself the biggest, fattest Navigator in Starfleet.'

'You sure?' Tasha asked. 'I don't think this craft has enough hot water and towels to deal with any sort of maternal emergency…'

'Trust me, Tasha. This baby's quite happy where she is right now, and probably will be for the next twelve weeks at least. The worst you'll have to worry about is my sleeptalking, which was the whole reason I volunteered to come with you in the first place.'

'She's already made up her mind, Tasha,' added Will. 'Trying to talk her out of it'd be a waste of breath. Trust me. I've tried.'

Tasha nodded, and smiled at her friend. 'If you're sure. Even if you don't have any more dreams, you're certainly a force to be reckoned with when it comes to finding out secrets, and that's pretty much all I'm faced with right now – a wall of secrets.'

'Then it's settled,' beamed Deanna. 'When were you thinking of leaving?'

'No time like the…' Tasha trailed off, as a second unexpected couple walked into the shuttle bay, lugging a heavy looking box between them.

'What is this,' she called to Geordi and Manek as they approached, 'a Bon Voyage party? Are you guys gonna throw streamers and confetti while we wave our hats out of the windows? Because once we leave the airlock, that is gonna get messy.'

'I'm coming with you,' Geordi replied. 'You're gonna need somebody to fly the damn shuttle.'

'I can fly it myself.'

'Not like me, you can't.' Geordi set the box down in front of Tasha. 'Besides, I'm the only one who knows how to work this.'

Tasha cocked an eyebrow at the box. 'What is it?'

'A propulsion modification,' Manek told her, 'capable of giving a small craft momentum through minute, almost entirely undetectable bursts of energy.' Manek gave her fiancé a subtle glance of pride. 'Geordi designed and built it himself.'

'It's not exactly a cloaking device,' Geordi muttered.

Manek put a hand on his shoulder. 'It's a stroke of genius.'

'A bolt from the blue,' agreed Geordi. 'And that's why I felt I had to bring it.'

'I don't understand,' said Tasha.

'The whole concept for this thing – how it could work, how to build it – came to me in a dream.'

'That seems to be happening a lot lately,' Tasha noted. 'So I guess, unless somebody else is about to come dashing up having had a vision that they should make the tea, we've got ourselves a full consignment for this mission.'

She helped Geordi and Manek carry the propulsion modification onboard the shuttle as Will and Deanna lingered in the doorway, swapping farewells.

'You will bring my betrothed back in one piece,' said Manek, 'won't you?'

'Priti…' grumbled Geordi.

'I lost the man I loved,' Tasha replied. 'The man I was going to marry. I wouldn't want to put anybody through that sort of pain – let alone a good friend. If there's any risks to be taken on this mission, it's me who's going to take them. Because I'm the only one of us who has nothing left to lose.'

-x-

Lore's voice had fallen silent for a while. Rather than bringing Data any sort of peace, this lull in the monologue in the back of his head only served to make him tense and anxious. It wasn't peace – it was a calm before a storm. It seemed as though Lore was waiting for something…

Doors open. Lights on. Maddox here for him again, the same questions, the same stories, the same madness, always the same…

Only, the sound of Maddox's footsteps were all wrong. This sounded like somebody else. Had somebody else found him? Was he to be rescued? Was he to be switched off and returned to the void where Lore could not trouble him and could never harm anybody again? Dare he hope?

He struggled to turn himself so that he could see who had entered the room. Before he so much as saw the face, he heard and recognised the voice.

'Hello again, Lore.'

Poklar.

A basic flight instinct asserted itself within him, causing him to attempt to scramble from her almost automatically. She laughed.

'You look positively surprised, Lore. Surely, you'd remembered the effects of my Inhibitor from last time.'

For some reason, he had not deduced that it had to be Poklar's inhibition device that had impaired his physical abilities. Perhaps it was because his logical functions were also damaged, but possibly it was simply because he had never imagined that Maddox would ever join forces with the vengeance crazed Romulan.

'I am not Lore,' he replied, still attempting to claw some distance between himself and Poklar, even though he knew that there was nowhere that he could go.

'_Yes, we are,_' piped Lore's voice in the back of his head as he dragged himself across the floor.

'Yes, you are,' echoed Poklar, pacing confidently towards him. 'The Daystrom Institute were made to verify that it really was you when your body was deactivated. I know it's you.' She knelt down next to him, catching his hands as he continued to try to pull himself away and easily pinning him. 'You thought that you could get away with it, after all the people you killed; all the pain you created? You thought deactivation was an easy escape?' She leaned her face in close. 'Do you believe in Hell?'

That was a complicated question. He had researched many varied theologies regarding numerous themes, including those of rewards and punishments meted out in the afterlife, and had never reached a definitive conclusion about what he felt it meant, if anything. However, at this particular moment, he believed that it was not the correct time to begin a discourse upon the matter.

'Not in a traditional sense,' he told her.

'You will do,' Poklar replied, 'when I'm done with you. You see, I finally understand what I've been put here in this universe to do. I'm here to make you pay for every life you've taken – every crime upon the natural biological order that you've committed. I am your Hades; your Lucifer, your burning angel.' She paused. 'It's the angels that have halos, right?'

Data made no reply, but he recalled the terrible pain that that contraption had caused him before, and the emotional extremes that the agony had driven him to.

Poklar reached inside a gap in her tunic and pulled out a thin, simple band of wire, with a tail no thicker than a string of spaghetti running down from it.

'I've had time to make a few modifications over the years,' Poklar explained. 'It doesn't look as fearsome as it did the last time, but as we both know, Lore, appearances can be deceiving.'

'Poklar,' replied Data in a plaintive tone. 'Please.'

Poklar smiled. 'Frightened you'll feel something?'

'You were right,' added Data, hastily. 'About Lore, that is. I am Data, but I am an invader in his body. I can feel his consciousness still, lingering about the edges of my mind, waiting for his chance to assume dominance again. I almost lost control, the last time you used the Halo on me. If that happens again, then that might provide him with the window of opportunity that he needs. Please, Poklar. You must not run the risk of inflicting Lore upon this universe again.'

For a moment, Poklar seemed to hesitate, but she quickly shook off whatever doubts she had. She reached out and gently placed the Halo over his head.

'You have to be made to pay, Lore.'

She pressed a pad at the nape of his neck, and he felt the hair-thin needles shoot from the device and burrow into his head and spinal column.

'Poklar, listen to me…'

'There's only one thing I want to hear from you now.'

She pressed another pad, and along came the pain – the same sensation of burning that Poklar had first used on him when she had had him abducted. He clenched his fists, gritted his teeth and thought back to that time before - how he was able to defy her by refusing to scream, and how the pain always subsided again after a few minutes. He tried his best to concentrate on that, but even as he did, he could hear the voice of Lore growing louder and more insistent still in his mind.

'_She wore blue velvet, woah woah… bluer than velvet was the night, woah, woah, woah… softer than satin was the light from the…_'

A dull "thunk" from beyond the chamber startled Poklar, and brought the singing in Data's mind to a screeching halt. She turned the pain simulation off as she looked up in the direction of the sound with a frown. There was a second, louder noise. Poklar pulled the Halo from Data's head and got to her feet, cursing quietly.

'Poklar?' called Maddox's voice through an intercom. 'Where are you?'

'On my way,' Poklar replied.

'You said after last time that there wouldn't be any more asteroid collisions,' Maddox continued.

'We must have drifted a little,' Poklar told Maddox. 'I'll change our position. Stop worrying, they were only small ones. Hull integrity won't have been compromised.'

'I'm on my way over to the cockpi… the bridge now,' Maddox added. 'Where _are_ you?'

'On my way,' repeated Poklar. She leaned in close to Data. 'He'll have to go to sleep again sooner or later,' she whispered. 'Overriding his security programme on the doors to this cell was childsplay. I'll see you again very soon, Lore. And then, we'll start having some real fun.'


	5. Chapter 5

ORPHEUS

-x-

Five

-x-

Deanna Troi sat up, suddenly. 'Asteroids!'

'Same to you,' replied Tasha, absently, her attention flitting between the shuttle's monitors and Q's business card.

'No,' said Deanna, urgently. 'There are asteroids hitting the ship Data's on.'

Tasha and Geordi exchanged glances. Deanna had been wide awake for the three hours they'd spent since leaving the Titan.

'You remembering new details about the dream?' Geordi asked. 'How did Priti miss that?'

'She didn't,' Deanna replied. 'This wasn't in the dream. It just came to me now. It was very clear.'

Geordi turned back to Tasha. 'I suppose it's possible that taking the leap of faith of following the messages might have changed the nature of them – made them more direct.'

'Or maybe whoever I'm getting these messages from is getting more urgent,' Deanna added.

Tasha nodded. 'Let's assume that they're still on Poklar's ship, and that she's still in charge of its operation. From previous experience, she'd see an asteroid belt as an ideal hideout.'

'Well,' said Geordi, punching code into the shuttle's computer, 'at least that narrows down the search a little bit.' He gazed at the search results on the monitor and shook his head. 'Unfortunately, there are over 2,000 asteroid belts in range of the Daystrom Institute, even in the bucket Poklar's got.'

'It's a start,' Tasha replied. 'We start searching all those asteroid belts – closest to the Institute first, and just hope for a stroke of luck or another sign.' She offered the others a tight, anxious smile. 'Deanna, you just got the most vivid, useful message yet about Data. Who knows – maybe the signs are gonna start coming in thick and fast, now.' She paused, frowning at Deanna's troubled expression. 'You don't exactly seem happy about that.'

'It wasn't just a message,' Deanna replied. 'It was him. And he's so afraid. Even when he was alive, and with emotions, I never felt him as clearly as this before. I never sensed such distress from him.'

Tasha turned away from Deanna, staring out of the shuttle's front window into the vast void of space.

'Hang in there, Sweetie,' she muttered. 'I'm coming.'

-x-

'_I'm coming._'

'No.'

'_How long do you think you'll be able to hold out, once she starts torturing you? Realistically? You'll bring me to the surface. You know you will. And then what? You think this Inhibitor can hold me indefinitely?_'

Data just lay still, trying and failing to silence Lore's voice.

'_I'll go and find them first, you know – your friends – before your consciousness has been able to completely drown under mine. Remember the mess I made of Poklar's workmates? That'll be nothing compared to what I do to your little "family"; those meat sacks that you chose to be your brothers and sisters over me. I'll hunt every last one of them down, and you'll be a helpless witness as I rip and crush and gouge. You'll hear what "please, please God, just kill me" sounds like in Klingon, and in French, and in… I don't know, Braille – I can't think of a clever way of telling you that I'll make that little blind buddy of yours suffer horribly agony and indignity before the end. And that Turkanan bitch. Oh, I'll take my time over her. She'll wish she never left the sewers of that forsaken city she spawned in…_'

'Make it stop,' he muttered aloud.

'_That's what they'll say,_' continued Lore's voice, '_that's what they'll all say. "Make it stop. Please, kill me. I want this misery to end".'_

'Make it stop,' Data said, louder this time. 'I know that you have the power to make this stop.'

'_I'm not going anywhere,_' replied Lore.

'I was not talking to you!' Data snapped.

He paused. Silence.

'You still owe me a favour,' he added, aloud. 'I am now officially calling that in.'

Still nothing.

'Hello?'

Silence, still.

'Perhaps you are not omniscient after all…'

'Am too,' replied Q, suddenly lounging against a computer bank while inspecting a fingernail. 'That doesn't mean I'm at your beck and call. I'm an all powerful immortal who owes you one – I'm not your valet.'

'And yet, here you are.'

'Ah, but you see, that's because I know this is where I'm supposed to be. This is where I know you think you're going to finally call in that favour you're owed for saving my mortal life.'

'I "think" I am going to call in the favour?' repeated Data with a frown.

'Well, I _tried_ to repay it there and then,' said Q, 'but you refused. Most ungracious, my plastic pal, most ungracious indeed. I was hurt.'

'You were not. You were disappointed that a few minutes of voyeuristic enjoyment had been ruined, at best.'

Q shrugged. 'I did my best, Data, and you turned me down. Why should I offer to help you now?'

'What I ask of you is no great feat,' Data replied. 'You know that I was killed.'

Q nodded.

'They brought me back from death,' continued Data, 'against my will.'

'I know,' Q replied. 'Omniscient, remember? And I know that's not really the problem. The problem is that they put you in your brother's body and now you're worried that his personality is lingering and waiting to take control again with catastrophic results, yadda yadda yadda.'

'In a nutshell,' Data admitted, 'yes.'

'You hear his voice?'

'Constantly. It is getting louder.'

'You only started hearing it after you worked out for yourself you were in his disused body though, didn't you?'

Data didn't answer.

'You know what I'd suggest, if I were a Therapist?'

'You are far from being a Therapist.'

'Perhaps,' replied Q, archly, 'but if I was, I'd say that this is all just in your mind – your consciousness' way of dealing with the transitory phase between corporeal vessels, and that it'll pass once you've grown a little more accustomed to your new skin.'

Data shook his head as well as the Inhibitor would allow. 'I cannot take that risk.'

Q shrugged with a faint "don't say I never told you so" sigh. 'OK then, so what would _your_ solution be?'

'Destroy me,' replied Data, simply. 'Return me to the state that I was never supposed to have left. You will remove the threat of Lore taking command of this body, and I will be at peace.'

'Hmm,' said Q with a faint nod. 'Well, that sounds straightforward enough.'

He paused, as he pretended to mull Data's suggestion over.

'No.'

'No?'

'Of course I'm not going to just snuff you out, Data. That's not how I do things.'

Even though Data was certain that backchatting Q was not a good idea, the stress of his situation compelled him to do just that. 'Too straightforward for you?'

'For starters, yes,' agreed Q. 'But, in case you somehow hadn't noticed, I'm not in the habit of simply going around killing people.'

'Not even people who should be dead? Not even people who want to be dead?'

Q folded his arms and grinned at Data. 'Not when they're funny, no.'

'You think that this is funny?'

'Oh, don't take that as an insult, my mechanised monkey. Everything you do is funny! If anybody should be insulted by this exchange, it's me. I mean; you're owed a favour by a being of ultimate power – your genie in a bottle, your very own Blue Fairy Godmother. I'm capable of anything you could imagine, and a lot of things that you couldn't, and when you call on me to return that favour, the only thing you can think of is to kill you? A gorilla with a big, pointy stick and a couple of magnets could do that! I know you're not exactly having the best day, but come _on_! Think outside the box a little, could you?'

'If you will not kill me,' replied Data, 'then remove all traces of Lore's personality from this body, so that he cannot assume primary dominance…'

'How do you expect me to remove something that I'm certain isn't really there?' Q asked. 'Like I say, I'm sure this is just a reaction to being…'

'…to being in Lore's body,' Data finished. 'I know.' He paused, thinking. 'Then change this body so that it is no longer Lore's.'

There was an odd glint in Q's eye. It seemed that Data had finally suggested something that caught the immortal's interest.

'Return me to my old body,' added Data, hopefully.

'Putting you back as you were isn't all that much of a favour,' replied Q. 'Certainly not when you'd still be stuck here under the influence of Poklar's machines. She almost broke you when she tortured you last time, didn't she? Even the old Data was known to resort to violent acts under extreme provocation. The Borg could testify to that.'

Data stared at Q. It suddenly struck him that, from the moment Q had begun the conversation with him, he had been steering Data towards making one certain request. Indeed, Q had probably decided what the "favour" he should do Data was going to be long before this meeting.

'You want to make a hypocrite of me,' Data said.

Q just smiled.

'The origins of this "favour" you feel you owe do not go back to my saving your mortal life; they go back further. You offered immortality to Commander Riker, and gave him the power to make me human. I declined, planting the seed of doubt that would help Commander Riker to make the decision to reject your offer. You want me to go against the principals that I held back then, to prove you right after all. You want me to ask you to make me human.'

'It wouldn't be Lore's body any more, if it were human,' replied Q. 'And the Inhibitor and Halo would have no effect on you. Besides, isn't what turning you into a real boy's what being a Blue Fairy Godmother's all about? Isn't that what it's always been about?'

'What are you implying?'

Q shrugged. 'I just knew, that day you saved my life, that, in turn, this day would come. Whether or not you were consciously or subconsciously setting up for this payoff is down to your interpretation, I suppose.'

'To be made human by you would simply be an illusion…'

'No it wouldn't. I know enough about the universe not to try to make little boys out of slugs and snails and puppy dog tails. You'd be a bona fide Homo-Sapiens. I'd even replicate the Soongs' DNA to stuff your little cells with.'

'It would be… cheating.'

'And how, exactly, is bringing you back from the void to live in your brother's reanimated corpse not "cheating"? They're the ones who changed the rules here, Data. Not you. And not me, for once. If anything, what I'm offering is to make you more real – more yourself – ready to take on the next set of challenges in this lifelong quest of yours – instead of this Frankenstein's Monster, lying helpless and trapped, waiting for the mad scientists to come and prod at you again.'

Data frowned, but did not reply.

'Admit it,' Q added, 'Ever since our paths first crossed, you've considered the likelihood that I could make a human of you in the wink of an eye. The Continuum making me mortal only cemented that idea. And now, here we are. I'm happy to wave my magic wand, and you… what exactly could you possibly have to lose, Data?'

Data closed his eyes.

'I need you to say it,' Q added.

'You do not "need" me to do or say anything.'

'Oh, all right,' admitted Q, 'but I _want_ you to say it. Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight, I wish I may, I wish I might…'

Data exhaled, slowly. 'Do it.'

'Excusez-moi?'

'Make me human.'

'Le mot magique…?'

'_Please_. Make me human. Anything to silence Lore.'

Q grinned, victoriously. He knelt down and easily hauled Data up into a seated position.

'Bibbedy,' he beamed, 'Bobbedy…' he reached out a finger and touched Data lightly on the tip of his nose. 'Boo.'

Data sat back. For a moment, nothing seemed to have changed. Then he became aware of something warm and wet dripping from his top lip. He brushed his fingertips over his mouth and gazed at the thick liquid on his hand.

It was blood. His nose was bleeding.

That was when everything began to crash in on itself. His vision, hearing and olfactory systems all dimmed suddenly, while tactile sensations of pain exploded all over his body. And his mind – his mind! He could feel himself losing enormous chunks of information and memory. It was if his brain was turning to cotton wool… cotton wool that, somehow, hurt like all Hell.

'You're going from metal to meat,' he heard Q say as though from a room beyond. 'It's not exactly going to be the easiest transition for you.'

'It hurts,' said Data, and although he had thought that his tone had been quiet, his voice seemed to boom inside his head.

'Life hurts,' replied Q, matter-of-factly. 'Good luck with that.'

Data looked up blearily at the space where Q had just been. The Blue Fairy Godmother had left the building.

His limbs were beginning to gain strength, although they were still far too shaky for him to pull himself upright. He managed to get onto all fours before he felt a lurch in what he had to assume was his new stomach. Hot, acidic fluid pushed its way up through his throat until he vomited out a mouthful of bitter, yellow bile. A memory of the mechanical tried to get him to perform a self-diagnostic, but the only results of any introspection he could award himself were "my Everything hurts". He watched on trembling arms and legs as his still-gushing nose dripped blood into the puddle of bile, while his digestive system gurgled and cramped emptily and his head pounded.

And then, he did something rather strange, under the circumstances.

He started to laugh.

-x-

'Something's changed,' said Deanna. 'Something big.'

'What?' Tasha asked. 'What changed? Is he OK?'

Deanna shook her head, vaguely. 'I don't know. Everything's suddenly too…' she screwed up her face in concentration and, it seemed, pain, '…too bright. Too vivid. It's like… like I've turned the volume up on a music programme that was too quiet in order to hear it, but suddenly now it's blaring.'

She paused.

'I know where it's coming from.'

It was Geordi's turn to screw up his face. 'Can you even do that?'

'This remotely?' Deanna replied. 'Not normally. But then, this isn't exactly a normal circumstance.'

She tilted her head down, pointing an index finger straight down at the floor. 'Down. It's coming from down there.'

Geordi turned back to the monitors. 'There's only one system in that direction that's close enough to the Daystrom Institute for Poklar's ship to have gotten to, and has an asteroid belt. Its planets are all pretty uninteresting, not a microbe of life on them…'

'Nice and deserted for Poklar, then,' Tasha added. 'Sounds like her sort of hideout.'

Geordi's lips curled into a faintly weary smile. 'You'll never guess what the system's called.'

'What?'

'Hay-D.'

'"Hades"?' echoed Tasha. She rolled her eyes up to the ceiling. 'Laying the symbolism on a little thick now, aren't we Q? Oh well – a clue's a clue, no matter how dense you seem to think we are. Set a course for…'

'Already on it.' Geordi told her.

-x-

Something had changed. Something big. Maddox could tell that just by looking at the cell's monitors. Someone or some_thing_ had managed to get in, and now everything was wrong. He rushed to the holding cell and opened the doors.

When he did, the sight that greeted him made his stomach lurch. The smell of blood and vomit didn't exactly do anything to help that.

There was a human – a middle aged human male, hunched shivering on all fours over a pool of bile. A string of blood and phlegm hung from the man's nose almost down to the floor. The human, clearly in shock, was gasping to inhale but giggling hysterically on the exhale. There was no android in the room. Alerted to his presence, the human raised his head and laughed again, a line of blood and spit dangling from his chin.

The face that Maddox stared into should have been android, but it was not. He had no idea how Data had done it, or why, but there he was. A human. Just another mammal full of blood and bile and spit and snot. Maddox took in a deep, shuddering breath himself as Data gasped for air again.

'Oh, Data. What have you done?'

'Exchanged my marvellous, miraculous existence for that of a ten-a-penny human,' Data giggled.

'I don't understand…'

'Because, because, because, because, because,' Data replied, hysterically, 'because of the wonderful things he does!'

Maddox shook his head, dismayed. 'You've ruined everything, Data. All that work. The work of your creator, and all of those who went before him. All of _my_ work! Years, dedicated to studying you, and then to bringing you back…' Maddox trailed off, thinking. 'I brought you back.'

'You brought me back all wrong,' Data replied. 'You put me in Lore's body – he was fighting to take over. I had to stop that. I had to change.'

'I brought you back once,' Maddox continued, ignoring Data. 'And I can do it again.'

That wiped the grin off Data's face. It was his turn to shake his head in bewilderment now; blood still streaming from his nose.

'I…'

'You were a copy of a copy, Data,' Maddox told him. 'I still have your personality on Graves' machine. Exactly the same as it was when we downloaded it into your new body.'

'What?'

Maddox was thinking fast. Was what he was considering morally right? Probably not. But considering all that the Federation had to gain from getting Data back the way it was…

'There's still one more functioning android body out there, after all. He'd be easy to obtain, and personality would be so easy to wipe. A perfectly good vessel.'

Still on all fours, Data made a pathetically weak lunge towards Maddox. 'No.'

Maddox shook his head with a smile approximating that of pity. 'What else can I do, Data? I _had_ an empty, lifeless body available, but you've made sure I can't use that, now. B-4's all there is left. You've forced my hand.'

Data lunged again, and managed to catch Maddox's ankle. 'You have no respect for us, do you? You never have. We are just… things to you.'

Maddox kicked his hand away. 'Listen to yourself. You're not one of them any more. You can't include yourself when you get all high and mighty about Artificial Intelligence Rights now. You accuse _me_ of not respecting Dr Soong's magnificent creations? After what you've just done? I'm just trying to keep Soong's work alive. You seem intent on destroying it. Typical human.'

'I will not allow you to destroy B-4's personality,' Data replied. He reached behind himself, wincing as he pulled a small block of circuitry from the small of his back. Poklar's Inhibitor came out of the human flesh easily, but clearly painfully. 'This thing does not work on me any more,' added Data, flinging the bloodied contraption to the floor.

'So?' Maddox countered. 'You're still just a man – a weakened, bleeding, middle-aged little man. It's going to come as such a shock to you just how little you'll be able do these days that you used to do with ease, even when you're back on your feet… _if_ you ever get back on your feet.' He paused. 'Do you have any idea how much trouble I've had to go to to keep Poklar from getting at you?'

'Clearly, not enough trouble,' Data said, 'she got in anyway.'

'Do you think this… alteration of yours is going to dull her hatred of you at all?' Maddox asked.

'She hates Soong model androids.'

'She hates _you_. She's consumed with it. I've worked with her for years, and been alone with her on this crate for months. She got us all away from the Daystrom Institute and hid us well, and I do need her ship and her equipment, but Data, she's _insane_. It's been such hard work sheltering you from her madness for so long, but I did it because you were so special. So valuable. So unique. But what are you now? You're nothing. I see no reason to help you any more.'

Maddox turned, and walked out of the cell.

'I'm going to put a bounty out on B-4,' he told Data as he went. 'He's seeing the sights of Earth right now, so I'm told. All alone. We should have his body within the week. I very much doubt that you'll live to see that.'

He switched off all the security controls to the little cell, leaving the door open. 'Welcome to the Human race,' added Maddox, leaving the other man still struggling to get upright. 'Enjoy it while you can – you won't be experiencing it for long.'


	6. Chapter 6

ORPHEUS

-x-

Six

-x-

They slowed to an almost full stop as they approached the asteroid belt.

'Got 'em,' announced Geordi. 'It's deep in the belt, but there's a craft in there all right.'

Tasha peered at the monitor. 'What can you tell about the ship? Can they outrun us from here?'

'Not sure,' Geordi replied. 'But since Poklar's had ample time to modify it, I'm pretty sure they can outfight us… I mean, a kid with a peashooter could probably outshoot us. Besides, they've got Data, and they're already making him pretty miserable as it is… don't really want to make them mad.'

'So, we sneak up on them.'

Geordi nodded.

'Is it _possible_ to sneak up on a ship through an asteroid belt?' asked Deanna.

'Normally,' said Geordi, 'no. But, we've got the Dream Machine.'

'The propulsion modification unit you built,' added Tasha.

'It'll be slow going,' Geordi told them, 'but I can get us safely through here without being detected. Their scanners'll think we're just another asteroid.'

'Good. Do it.'

'Already am.' Geordi paused. 'Funny. This shuttle's built too small, isn't it? Manufacturing flaw.'

Deanna nodded. 'Why?'

'Half a cubic metre bigger, and I'd never be able to steer this thing around these asteroids using just the propulsion modification,' Geordi told them. 'This is possibly the only four berth shuttle in Starfleet small enough to get through unseen.'

'Guess that explains why Q chose it for us,' Tasha replied.

'But,' added Deanna, 'there are only three of us.'

Tasha didn't reply. She'd thought of that, too. She didn't want to think about that, right now. Her mission was to put Data - or what remained of Data - out of his misery. She didn't dare to hope that it was anything else but that. She just didn't dare.

-x-

How long had he been like this?

No way of knowing, no way of knowing. No internal chronometer, no sunlight to gauge anything by… not even so much as a wristwatch… and, in spite of everything, that thought made him snort a faint laugh. Maybe he would be able to calculate the passage of time a little more precisely if everything did not _hurt_ so much. He had had no idea that physical pain could actually alter one's perception of time.

He attempted for the fourth time (or was it the fifth…?) to pull himself onto his feet, and on this occasion found himself able to stand, albeit clutching a computer bank set against the wall for support. He began to drag and stumble towards the open cell door… not that he had the first idea yet how he was to get off Poklar's ship. He just wanted to get out of that cell. If it was the last thing he did, he _had_ to get out of that…

'Well, well.'

Data stopped concentrating on his feet and looked up, sharply. Poklar was framed in the open doorway, blocking his escape.

'What an interesting trick,' Poklar continued.

'It is no trick…'

'Thought you'd get clever with me, did you?'

'Lore is gone,' Data told her. 'This is no longer his body. And your contraptions cannot be used to torture me any more.'

Poklar laughed, faintly. 'Oh dear. Oh, dear, dear, dear. What's happened to that brilliant brain of yours? All meat and mush, now. All human and stupid.'

'I do not…'

'Think about what you're saying, you idiot,' snapped Poklar. 'So the Halo doesn't work. Why do you think I built the thing in the first place?'

'To hurt me.'

'Very good,' she replied, her voice full of sarcasm. 'I went to all that trouble to hurt you, because I knew it would never harm you if I were just to do this…'

She slashed out a fist. Data tried to block it, but his arms were too slow. It hit him hard in the face; knocking him off his newly found balance and straight back onto his back again. He gasped, winded, with a strange smell in the back of his nose.

'And believe me,' continued Poklar, approaching him, 'this is so much more gratifying than simply simulating pain. Because with a simulation, you just recreate the message that the body's being damaged.' She knelt down, straddling his chest. 'It's a lot more fun to actually damage it.'

She punched him again in the face, hard. Pain hit him like a red wall, latticed with white light. He gasped, choking slightly on a thick, hot, metallic liquid in his mouth.

'You'll be aware of a smell in the back of your nose,' Poklar told him. 'Adrenaline. The fight or flight reflex, although you're too weak to do either. What you taste is…'

'Blood,' said Data. 'I can taste my own blood.'

'Get used to that.'

She hit him again, and then a fourth time before he was able to weakly wriggle out from beneath her. He had always considered himself to be a courteous being – certainly not one to take a swing at a woman – but being attacked by a female stronger and faster than him, and with eyes that burned with malice, caused chivalry to be thrown out of the window. It seemed, however, as he threw a punch back at her, that merely putting gallantry to one side was not enough to give him any sort of advantage in this situation. The blow connected weakly with Poklar's face. Her reaction was more one of annoyance than anything else as she grabbed his wrist and twisted it away.

'How rude,' she snarled. 'I think somebody needs to learn a few manners before…'

Adrenaline rushed through Data again, and he quickly yanked down the wrist that Poklar clutched, catching her off guard and causing her to lose her balance. He was able to pull her down and off him, and scramble to all fours, quickly pulling himself up onto his feet against the wall. He managed to get a few steps before Poklar grabbed him from behind, spinning him round and then bringing his face down, hard, into a computer bank.

For a second, everything went black and Data panicked that his new human eyes had already been blinded. His whole face was in pain, and hot and wet with what could only be yet more blood. After a moment, his vision faded back in. He was still hunched over the computer bank, blood from his mouth dripping onto his hand. Again, the adrenaline soared.

_Fight or flight. Fight or flight._

He noticed a sharp fragment of metal on the computer that he leaned against. These machines were old – salvaged and cannibalised, no doubt – and it seemed that his forehead must have broken off a piece of casing when his face had been slammed into it.

Poklar grabbed him from behind – the groin, this time, squeezing hard. He managed to clutch the shard of metal before she twisted him round to hit him again. She got one blow in before he swung his own arm, driving the jagged metal into her shoulder.

He cursed inwardly as she clutched at her shoulder and screamed. He had been aiming for her neck. A quick kill. Stabbing her in the shoulder was not going to kill her; it was just going to make her even angrier. How could he have missed? She had been right in front of him!

He realised quickly that chastising himself for missing was only going to waste the moment of distraction that wounding her had won him. He turned from her as she screamed, and limped away as quickly as he could. At long last out of the detested cell, he wondered where he could possibly go. It was a small ship. Nowhere to run, very few places to hide. But perhaps if he could get to Maddox before Poklar got to him, then he might at least stand a chance of wiping his memory files from Graves' machine – ending Maddox's experiment and saving B-4 from being purged and used as another empty vessel. He caught sight of a loose panel in the wall. Hastily, he pulled it away. It was not exactly a Jeffries Tube – more just a gap between walls, but he could fit into it and move through swiftly enough, although where his path led him, he could not ascertain. He pulled the panel back, closing himself into a tight darkness, and pressed ahead, blindly, into the gloom.

-x-

After two hours of painfully slow creeping through the asteroid belt, Tasha was able to see the craft that they were approaching through the window. It was another 20 minutes before they slid the shuttle underneath the other ship and stopped; the roof of the shuttlecraft flush against the belly of their quarry. She shook her head at both Geordi and Deanna as they got to their feet when she lifted her phaser.

'Oh no, you don't.'

'You're not doing this alone,' Deanna insisted.

'No, I'm not. I've got a great pilot and a great navigator. But you've done your job, for now. You've got me here. And I need to know that you're both here ready to take me back at a moment's notice.' She noted their expressions. 'Guys, I'm not going to deprive Will of his wife and child, or Priti of her Fiancé for the sake of this mission. I've already asked so much. Too much.'

Geordi gave her a curt nod. 'I'll get us ready to skedaddle the moment you say the word. Good luck.'

'Thanks, guys.'

She quickly cut through the hulls of both small craft with her phaser, seeing the flash of the force field spark up between the ship and the shuttle after she had clambered up through the hole.

She was in the bowels of the ship – close to the engines. She didn't expect there to be anyone around. The engines of a ship this size, at a standstill at that, wouldn't require that much maintenance. If there were only Maddox and Poklar on board, she was sure that neither would spare the time to poke at the engines unless it were absolutely vital.

There was, however, a very good chance that she would run in to either or both while searching for Data and Graves' machine. She clutched at her phaser and crept swiftly through the room. Some of the panels seemed a little loose – there was probably an access tunnel between the walls. She gave one of the panels an experimental tug. Just as the metal was coming away, she heard it. The scuffle of feet and the swish of fabric being drawn across a wall. There was somebody in there. And whoever it was seemed to be in a desperate hurry. The sound was moving away from her – heading towards the front of the ship. The wall panelling came away on the next tug. She slid herself through and followed the direction that the other person had gone in. She could still just about make out the person ahead of her – laboured breathing and what sounded like a limp as they moved. Her fingers brushed something wet on the narrow walls. It was too dark to see what it was, but she could guess. She gave it a sniff.

Blood. Human blood at that. So it was Maddox who was limping painfully through the tunnel. But why? And why at such speed, when he was hurt? Her best guess was that Poklar had turned on him. She hadn't exactly been in the best mental health for some time – who knew what months alone with him out in space was going to do to her already twisted mind? Perhaps she could get Maddox to see sense – to help her against Poklar…

'Maddox,' she hissed, speeding up her pace. 'Maddox…'

The figure ahead of her clearly hadn't heard. She saw a chink of light far ahead of her as he pushed another wall panel open. She squinted. He was far away, and obscured by shadow, but for the split second that he was in the light before slipping painfully through the gap in the wall, she could have sworn that it hadn't been Maddox she'd seen at all. It looked more like… but that was impossible. This had been a human. He was injured, bloodied. Wishful thinking that she'd seen who she thought she had. Her eyes playing tricks, surely. She continued towards the chink of light. If she could just get to Maddox before…

A heavy blow to the back of her head threw her to the floor. She was roughly turned onto her back so that she could make out Poklar's scarred, grinning face leaning over her in the darkness.

'Oh,' Poklar whispered. 'I remember you. Isn't this just _precious_?'

Before Tasha could say or do anything else, the Romulan began to rain blows down on her.

-x-

Data moved as quickly as he could; glad to be out from between the walls. He had experienced odd, unsettling sensations back there, in the gloom. Although he had not been able to see or hear anybody following him, he had… he had _sensed_ it, somehow. A prickle on the back of his neck, the sensation of being pursued. He had never sensed anything on an intuitive basis like that before in his existence. In years gone by, in a different life, now, he would have paused and marvelled at the new sensation. Now, he did not like it. Now, it panicked him further, and made it feel as though the already narrow walls were pushing in on him. Perhaps as a human he was doomed to suffer from claustrophobia.

Great. That was all he needed. A phobia.

A shadow in a doorway ahead stopped him for a second.

Maddox. Had to be. Poklar was behind him. He scanned the corridor he was in for a makeshift weapon, and found nothing but a discarded flagon, still half full of cold coffee in a corner. Deciding that this was better than nothing, he picked it up and approached the doorway he had seen Maddox in.

'Maddox.'

As soon as Data got to the doorway, he saw it – Graves' machine, still up and running, still with his memory and personality stored, with Maddox next to it, protective and alarmed.

'Data!' Maddox gave Data the once over. 'See Poklar got to you. But you're still alive, for now. Congratulations.'

'Delete my memories from Graves' machine,' was Data's reply.

'They're not _your_ memories, any more,' Maddox told him. 'You're no longer Data, and you get no say in the termination of Dr Soong's life work…'

'Dr Soong loved his creations like children…'

'And what do you think it would do to him to see one of his "children" like this?' interrupted Maddox with a sudden burst of rage, indicating to Data's human body.

'This is not about me any more! This is about B-4. Dr Soong would not have wanted you to do what you did to Lore's body, and he would certainly not wish you to force B-4 into the same situation.'

'B-4 is practically an empty vessel already,' cried Maddox. 'He's a feeble prototype. He's useless.'

'Was that not always your problem,' Data replied. 'You judge us by what use you can take from us.'

Data should have gauged the sudden spark of fury in Maddox's eyes. He should have been able to leap out of harm's way as the man lunged for him. But he did not. And for a moment, it was a pang of frustration at the loss of his android speed that consumed him, rather than the pain of having just been thrown to the floor. Pain did follow suit, however – spreading across his back and through his chest, making him fight for breath. It was a good three seconds before he so much as remembered that he still had the coffee cup in his grip.

'You are _not_ one of them!' Maddox shouted, landing a punch to the face as he did so.

Data managed to bring the coffee cup up into Maddox's face just as the pain exploded in his own pummelled cheek. Cold coffee splashed in Maddox's eyes and ceramic ground into the bridge of his nose. Maddox grasped at his face, bleeding and surprised. Data pushed himself away. He tried to crawl towards Graves' machine, wondering how quickly he would be able to delete his memories from the device manually, but Maddox made a grab for his ankles and yanked back, causing him to lose his balance and flop face down on the floor. Data felt Maddox manhandle him onto his back again. He flailed out an arm as he was twisted and managed to grasp the leg of a nearby chair.

'I won't let you…' Maddox managed before Data brought the chair down heavily on top of him as well as, unintentionally, himself. The chair's back hit his mouth hard. More blood gushed into his mouth, although this was hardly a novelty any more. There was also a sharp pain in his top gum, and the sensation of something giving way. He got back onto all fours as Maddox struggled to disentangle himself from the toppled chair. Data noticed as he made his painful way towards the machine that there was something small, smooth and hard in his mouth. He spat, and, along with yet more blood, out came a tooth. He tried to drag himself up onto his feet, but with an angry cry, Maddox came at him again, swinging the chair legs at his ankles. Data stumbled, but was able to grab hold of Graves' machine to keep him upright. Maddox swung the chair at him again – at his ribs, this time, but Data was able to catch it and wrench it from his hands. He lashed out at Maddox with a foot, kicking the scientist's leg from beneath him. As Maddox lost his balance and stumbled, Data managed to hand a hard blow onto the back of his head with the chair's back.

Dazed and miserable and helpless now to stop him from his slumped position on the floor, Maddox gazed up at Data.

'What are you doing, Data? Stop and ask yourself – what are you doing?'

Data froze, his fingers tight around the chair. 'Fighting,' he replied, his voice low and dreamlike. 'Not simply fighting – fighting dirty. Committing acts of violence, and wanton destruction of technology – important technology. Vandalism. Luddism.'

Maddox shook his head, slowly. 'That's not the Data I know.'

'Perhaps not,' Data conceded. 'This aggression, this destruction – paying more heed to gut reaction than to logical analysis. It's all so… human.'

He swung the chair high into the air and, even as Maddox screamed for him to stop, brought it crashing down on top of Graves' machine. The elderly, fragile contraption splintered and sparked at the first blow. It took three more strenuous smashes for the thing to suffer a small explosion, and power down until it was dark and motionless. Data only became aware of the faint humming noise the machine had been making once it had fallen silent. The loss of the sound of the machine hit him like another punch to the stomach. Relief filled him, combined with something that felt almost like grief, although he felt that that should not be right. He heard a man sobbing, and turned his face to Maddox, only to see that the other man was white faced, unmoving and silent with shock. The realisation that he was the one crying only made him collapse further into tears.

'What have you done?' The accusatory female voice intruded upon his moment of release. Adrenaline flooded his bloodstream again and snapped him out of it, bringing his attention back into the room. Poklar approached them, her face and neck slick and green with blood, her expression one of panicked rage.

Data drew breath to defiantly tell her that he had destroyed Graves' machine, but Poklar stormed straight past him to Maddox, not even acknowledging Data.

'What have you done?' she repeated. 'You've sold us out, haven't you, Maddox?'

'I…' Maddox looked as nonplussed as Data felt. 'I don't know what you mean…'

Poklar grabbed Maddox by the collar and hauled him up. 'They're here,' she told him through gritted teeth, spitting green gobulets at the scientist. 'They've come to collect him. They've found us. How did they find us?'

'Who?' Data asked, and when Poklar snapped her head around to look at him it was as though she'd only just realised he was in the room with them.

'Who is here?'

Poklar stared, then blinked, and her face crumpled into an expression that was almost pity.

'The Borg.'

A sudden plummeting sensation in the stomach – a lightness of the head. He wanted to fall into the floor at the sound of that name, and keep on falling – for the ship's hull to dissolve and allow the void of space to destroy his animal body – anything but the Borg. Anything but be taken alive by them again.

The only response his brain was able to get his mouth to form was 'What?'

'The Borg,' explained Poklar. 'They've been attacking outposts for months, now. They're growing. Rebuilt their Queen. And they're looking for you.'

Data looked to Maddox for confirmation of Poklar's claims, but Maddox simply stared back at the Romulan, his face a mask of horror and fear.

'They contacted,' added Poklar. 'Finally, a direct message from their Queen. They know you're on board, and they know you're human. They don't care. They still want you.' Poklar took a couple of slow steps towards Data, still dragging Maddox along with her. 'They're going to assimilate you. Make you like Locutus. Her favourite consort, back again – man and machine at one once more. And she'll fuck you, and fuck you, and fuck you, and you'll feel the whole thing, trapped deep within that mutilated fleshy body.'

'You are lying,' said Data, unsure.

'No, I'm not.' She started dragging Maddox over to another computer bank. 'Shall we all go together – set the ship to self-destruct? No countdown, this time. No chance for them to take any of us alive.'

'What are you doing, Poklar?' Maddox asked, his voice thick.

'It's over,' Poklar replied. 'It's all over.' She beckoned to Data. 'Come on, Data. We can die together. You don't have to go through all of that again. Come on.'

Data took a deep breath. 'No. If they are here, then we must fight them as best we can. Even if that simply means ramming them before we auto destruct.'

'You can't fight them!'

'I can. I have. I stopped them, twice.'

'But that was then. Look at the state of you!'

'We have to try!'

'They'll rape you,' Poklar cried. 'You think life was Hell with me, well just wait until they get their hands on you again! Our only option is to end it now. At least keep our dignity.'

'What dignity?' Maddox snapped, suddenly. 'The Borg haven't been heard from in years. Have you lost what ever remained of your mind, Poklar?'

Poklar turned on Maddox with a twisted snarl. 'I am not the one who's lost their mind! They're here. They've come to take him. To take _us_.'

'Who is here?' Data asked, again.

'Do you have any idea what they'll do to us?' continued Poklar, ignoring Data.

'Who is here?' he shouted over her.

There was a blast directly above him. A phaser shot to the ceiling – a warning shot. Slowly, he raised his hands in surrender, not yet turning to face the doorway that the shot had issued from. Then, he heard the voice.

'My name is Commander Natasha Yar of the USS Enterprise. And I'm placing all of you under arrest.

-x-

_A.N. Oh jinkies, I do apologise for how long it's taken me to update this. Lots of shiny new things distracting me. Thanks for your patience. xx_


	7. Chapter 7

ORPHEUS

-x-

Seven

-x-

He almost didn't dare to look, in case that too was a lie. But, he realised that if he was to surrender, he needed to face her, so he turned.

A female figure stood in the doorway, dressed in a Starfleet Commanding Officer's uniform, her right arm raised to hold the phaser aloft. How long had they said it had been – 5 years? She looked older than that, from the woman he remembered. Her hair was longer. It shadowed her face. But it was her eyes that had really changed. All the laughter had gone from them – all the joy. She searched his face, the hollow confusion on her expression matching how he felt inside. He was surprised that, for a moment, no strong emotions were forthcoming. There was nothing for the first few seconds but emotional numbness and bewilderment. Physically, he felt giddy and removed, as though he was watching the scene through a window from a high balcony that wobbled and shifted beneath his feet. He heard himself speak – even his voice sounded distant and thick.

'Tasha?'

-x-

So, there was a third collaborator – and from the state of him, he'd been the one she'd followed through the narrow gap between the wall panels, not Maddox. She kept an eye on him as he slowly turned to face her. A middle aged human male, Caucasian, battered and bruised. Bloodied torso and face. Her first thought about his appearance was 'wipe away the blood and he'd look like a younger Noonian Soong'. Then, she thought about how Maddox and Poklar had taken Lore's body, and thought about how the Borg had been able to graft organic skin onto Data, and she felt the panic began to rise.

Only, then the man locked gazes with her. Those eyes. They were pale blue now, rather than gold, but there was no mistaking them. It was, of course, impossible, but then, she'd put her trust in a lot of impossible things of late.

This wasn't Lore, or B-4, or any other Soong.

She drew breath to say his name, but he spoke first, distant and dazed.

'Tasha?'

'Data…?' The second syllable of his name choked in the back of her throat. 'How…?' She tried to focus. She was in the middle of arresting two mad scientists – this was not exactly the time for tears. 'You're alive. You're here. You're… you're human…'

'You grew your hair,' replied Data in the same, dreamlike voice.

Tasha had no answer to that. All that she was able to do was let out a short, strangled laugh.

'You see, Maddox?' barked Poklar. There's a Starfleet shuttle stuck to the bottom of my ship like a leech, waiting to take us all away. They can't have just found us and crept up on us without our knowing. You sold us out!'

'Poklar, you're crazy!' Maddox cried. 'Why would I do that?'

'For exactly that reason,' replied Poklar. 'You think I've lost my mind. I've noticed the way you've been looking at me. You'd rather take your chances with _them_ again than stay on the run with me.'

'I haven't contacted anybody!'

'It doesn't matter.' For somebody so badly injured and bleeding, Poklar moved surprisingly fast, closing the gap between Data and herself in a matter of moments. Wrapping one arm around his shoulders, she pulled a bloodied shard of metal from her belt and held it to his throat. She took a couple of steps towards the door, pulling Data along with her, watching Tasha intently as she went.

'Nobody's being taken from this ship,' Poklar announced. 'I'm ending this, right now.'

Data eyed Tasha, desperately. 'She intends to destroy the ship. You have to stop her.'

'If I set the ship to self destruct, we'll all go out together, in the wink of an eye,' said Poklar. 'If you try to stop me, Yar, I'll make it slow for him, and as painful as I possibly can. Try to draw your weapon against me and I'll cut him. You'll watch him bleed out, and hear him squeal as he goes.'

Tasha faltered, running possibilities through her mind, trying to work out the safest way to get Data away from her. Both Poklar and Data must have misinterpreted her hesitation as aquiescence, because the Romulan took another step towards the door, just as Data began to try to fight back. He made a grab for the sharp shard, wincing as it cut into his hand but not letting go.

'Leave while you can, Tasha. I am already dead.'

Seeing this as the distraction she needed, Tasha darted towards the struggling pair.

'And lose you again?'

She grabbed Poklar's wrist. Poklar snarled, and twisted, and Tasha saw in her eyes a flash of clarity – that Poklar had realised a way to truly hurt Data the way that Lore had hurt her. The jagged, makeshift blade was wrenched from Data's hand and turned towards Tasha. Tasha dodged, but miscalculated how far Poklar would be able to lunge with her free hand. A powerful blow knocked her from her feet. Tasha looked up as she saw the blade come down…

She only heard Data cry out her name in panic – she didn't hear the elderly disruptor being fired. She only saw the blade fall, and fall, and clatter harmlessly to the floor. Only after a moment of shock, waiting for an end that didn't come, did she notice that Poklar was dead.

She blinked at the slumped body, then gazed along the line of fire. Maddox was curled miserably at the far end of the room, the disruptor in his hands still aimed at the spot where Poklar had been when he'd killed her.

'Maddox…?'

'It's over,' murmured Maddox. 'It's all over. She'd lost all sense of reason – a brilliant mind, consumed by her obsession. And I helped her. I became just like her. We fed one anothers' delusions.' He looked at the disruptor in his hands for a moment, then turned it to point at himself. 'I'm sorry, Data.'

'No!' Tasha cried out. 'It doesn't have to end this way. Come with us.'

'I can't,' replied Maddox. 'I've seen the way the path I've taken ends.' He nodded at Poklar's body. 'I'm halfway there already. I can't carry on, and I can't go back to face justice. Who could forgive the things that we've done… that _I_'ve done?'

'I can,' said Data, quietly.

Maddox looked across the room at him, and nodded; tears welling in his eyes. 'You're a better human being than I am, Data. You always were.'

He fired.

A strange silence fell. Tasha looked from Maddox's body to Poklar's, to Graves' smashed machine, to Maddox again. An irrational little voice told her that if she looked at Data, he would no longer be there.

'Graves' machine…' she murmured.

'I broke it,' he replied. 'I hit it with a chair.'

Something inside her snapped. She didn't weep, she didn't scream, she didn't shower him with kisses… she laughed. She went into hysterics, until she was clutching at her bruised, aching sides with tears and fighting for breath. He took her shoulders, holding her tight, joining her in her giggling fit, but still she didn't dare to look at him. His skin was warmer than she remembered. Not to mention, stickier. She looked down at his hands. They didn't vanish under her gaze. They were very real, very human hands, complete with scraped knuckles, lacerated palms and fingers and a hell of a lot of blood.

'How…?' she began.

'Q,' he replied. 'How did you…?'

'Ditto,' she replied. 'We'll have to get a fruit basket delivered to the Continuum, or something.'

'I do not believe that Q cares much for fruit,'

She finally turned to face him, and gave his bloodied lips a light kiss.

'Ow,' he said.

'Let's go home.'

-x-

Geordi stepped back from his craftsmanship and inspected it yet again.

'Yep,' he concluded, 'that aughtta hold it.'

Deanna blinked out of her thoughts and looked across at him. 'We have a 15 hour journey in the vacuum of space ahead of us,' she reminded him. 'With that in mind, I think I'd like a more positive analysis of a patched up square metre of our ceiling than "that aught to hold it".'

'It'll hold,' Geordi assured her. He sat down next to her. 'Any more of an idea what's going on up there?'

Deanna shook her head. 'There was a lot of rage, and confusion. I'm sensing something more like relief now, but it's all still so confused. I just can't tell.'

As if on cue, Tasha's voice sounded over the Comms system. 'Yar to Orpheus…?'

'Orpheus here,' replied Geordi.

'It's over,' said Tasha. 'Two to transport on board.'

Geordi exchanged glances with Deanna, and beamed the two that Tasha had sent co ordinates for aboard the shuttle.

There was a moment, after the second person had materialised, when it simply didn't register for Geordi. He'd spent five long years mourning his friend, and coming to terms with the fact that he'd never get to see him ever again. Besides which, to his optical implants, that second person just did not look like Data. He was of a completely different atomic make-up. He just stood there, blinking at the bloodied human male that was holding on to Tasha for support, until Deanna got to her feet and, with a cry of 'Data', hurried over to him as quickly as her swollen frame would allow. Even then, Geordi found himself rooted to the spot.

He squinted. 'Data…?'

Could that really be his friend – very human and very much alive, gratefully receiving a hug from the pregnant Betazoid?

'Data…?' he repeated.

The man looked up from Deanna's shoulder and gave Geordi a small, faltering, unsure smile – the kind he used to make all those years ago when he'd thought of a line that he hoped would be amusing – the kind that would make Geordi internally brace himself for another truly terrible joke.

'You appear to be stuck in a loop, Geordi.'

Geordi walked over on slightly shaky legs and took Data's hand. 'It really is you.' He pulled his friend into a hug. 'We thought we'd never see you again.'

'An understandable assumption to make about somebody who has died.'

'What happened?' Geordi asked.

'A lot,' answered Data, still not pulling out of the hug. 'Although, I suspect your main queries will relate to how I am once more alive, and how I am human. The former is due to Maddox; the latter, to Q.'

Geordi pulled away and took a better look at Data's injuries. 'Dare I asked who minced your face?'

'A girl,' replied Tasha, leading Data over to one of the chairs.

'A revenge obsessed Romulan outlaw,' corrected Data, 'who also, I presume, got the better of Tasha as she was following me and beat her into temporary unconsciousness, given Tasha's injuries and the delay between Poklar finding me and Tasha's intervention.' Data yielded to Tasha's hands upon his shoulders, urging him to sit. 'You are fortunate, Tasha, that Poklar was so consumed by her want to catch up with me at that point that she did not think to kill you.'

'OK,' Tasha conceded, 'so I got beaten up by a girl, too.' She pulled a first aid kit from its compartment. 'Neither Maddox or Poklar are in any position to accompany us, by the way. Murder-suicide. I set a force field up over the hole we cut in their hull, but with no one manning that old wreck of a ship, I don't know how long it'll last.'

'Well,' replied Geordi, 'as nice as this part of the Universe is, I think we'd all like to go home, now.'

-x-

In the end, Poklar's ship lasted for 148 minutes after the shuttle had pulled away before the force field failed and the hull breach caused the whole thing to explode. The Orpheus was well clear of the asteroid belt by that point, but close enough still to pick up the explosion on their monitors.

By this point, Data's wounds had been patched up, all except the missing tooth, which he had cheerfully spent some time talking about getting replaced.

('You could get one that fires lasers from your mouth,' Geordi had grinned.

Data had prodded the fleshy hole again and replied 'enamel will more than suffice'.)

A lengthy, rambling chat had shifted from the subject of Deanna's pregnancy to Geordi's engagement.

('Priti Manek?' Data had asked, his eyebrows high.

'Yes,' Geordi had replied. 'You don't need to look so surprised about it, Data.'

Data's expression hadn't changed. 'Pretty Priti?'

'"Pretty Priti"?' Tasha had echoed, with a smirk.

'Geordi declared romantic urges for Lieutenant Manek after the very first time he saw her,' Data had explained as Geordi had pinched his brow. 'He occasionally referred to her as

'Pretty Priti in moments of particular wistfulness.'

'Yes,' Geordi had said, 'thanks Data'.

'But after all those years of yearning, you have finally won her affections,' Data had continued. 'Congratulations.' He had paused. 'Have you chosen a Best Man?'

'I had,' Geordi had replied, 'a few minutes ago, but if your speech is going to make any reference to "Pretty Priti" or "years of yearning", I'm gonna have to reconsider.')

Data had drank and eaten as well as he could given his missing tooth, finding that he particularly liked chicken laksa, albeit with the pieces of chicken picked out. The first trip to the bathroom had been an interesting one, although thankfully for Geordi, Data hadn't actually needed any physical assistance. Talking his friend through the process from behind the door had been disturbing enough, thank you.

Data slept now, as they approached their rendezvous point with the Enterprise and the Titan. Geordi let Tasha explain everything to the two Captains. It didn't take an Empath to be overwhelmed by the surge of joy that followed the moment of surprise and disbelief in both Picard and Riker's voices. Geordi found himself sniffing slightly to himself, for the first time since Data had come on board. Perhaps it was only just starting to sink in that it was real – that he truly did have his friend back. Deanna put a hand on his shoulder, her eyes bright with tears.

'Yes, it is real,' she said. 'We've all been given a new lease of life – not just him. I wish you could feel it – I wish _he_ could feel it, right now. All those hearts, rejoicing. Such love, on those two ships. Such happiness at his return.'

He took her hand. 'I don't have to feel it. I know it. And I'm sure he does, too.'

Deanna turned her head, looking over her shoulder in the direction of the sleeping area.

'He's dreaming,' she smiled. 'They're happy dreams. There's a funfair, and a beach. He feels at home.'

'You're picking up his dreams?'

Deanna nodded. 'Must be some residual element of the link that helped me locate him. I'm sure it'll fade, given time and physical dista…' She trailed off, blinking.

'What? What is it, Deanna?'

Deanna pressed her lips together tightly for a moment, suppressing a giggle, her eyes wide.

'Oh!'

Tasha turned to them. 'What?'

Deanna composed her self as well as she could. 'You just showed up, Tasha.'

'Oh,' chorused Geordi and Tasha.

'It's…' attempted Deanna, before breaking off with another amused, impressed expression. 'Well! Whether this is memory or fantasy, I'm certainly seeing some old friends in a new light at the moment…'

Tasha got to her feet, hastily. 'I'm gonna wake him up.'

'Let him sleep,' grinned Geordi, 'he's exhausted.'

'We'll be docking soon anyway.'

'Not for another thirty minutes!'

'Dammit, Geordi, I'm waking him up!'

-x-

'Oh, God,' Data told the ceiling. 'Oh God, oh Vishnu, oh Thor, oh Zeus, oh various Klingon deities, oh every being that was ever worshipped.'

'Enjoyed that, did we?' asked Tasha, propping herself up on an elbow.

'We did.' He kissed her. 'If only I had been given a younger body, I could cheerfully do that all over again, right now.'

Tasha cocked an eyebrow.

'I existed for many, _many_ years without entering the world of orgasms,' Data reminded her. 'Is it really any surprise to you that, now that I have finally arrived, I have no wish to leave? It is the same with curry. And Beethoven at full volume. And scratching an itch right in the middle of my back. Why did nobody tell me these things we all _so_ good?'

She gave him a gentle punch on the shoulder. 'You're like a teenager. Tell me this is going to settle down after a while – I'm having trouble keeping up.'

'Would you have preferred it if I had attended to myself today?'

It was a simple question, delivered with all of the inappropriate innocence of the Data from many years ago – no threat or accusation implied.

She smiled, and ran her fingers through his hair. 'We've been through this. If I'm not in the mood, I'll say so, and if you want to… "go solo" at any time, that's fine with me…'

'It is vastly preferable with you,' replied Data.

'Thank you.' Tasha checked the time, and pushed herself into a seated position. 'We'd better start getting showered and dressed. The wedding starts in an hour.'

'This is exciting,' Data announced, cheerily. 'I have never performed the duties of a Best Man before. And, it will be very pleasant to see Worf again, and Will, Deanna and the baby. They say that Lucy is sitting upright, unaided already.'

'She's a Riker.' Tasha crossed over to the bathroom, taking care not to tread on their still sleeping cat. 'Of course she's precocious.' She eyed their outfits, hanging on the door, as she stepped into the Sonic Shower – the formal uniform for her, and the blue civilian tunic for him. 'You know what they'll all be asking us, don't you?'

'Well,' replied Data as he padded in to brush his teeth, 'since we do seem to make a habit of proposing marriage to one another at our friends' weddings, I suppose comment is to be expected…'

'Not that,' said Tasha. 'Everyone knows Torres is transferring soon. And it's pretty common knowledge who it is that the Captain wants to take over her position at Ops.'

'The Captain kept his offer confidential. As have I. As have you, I trust.'

'Jean Luc doesn't always have to speak an intention for his closest friends to be aware of it. Even if they don't ask about the Ops post, people will want to know whether you've decided to take up Starfleet's offer. Straight back in as Lieutenant Commander – that's not to be sniffed at, Data.'

'Nor is it to be taken advantage of lightly,' added Data. 'I am not the person that I was – I am not capable of what I used to be.'

'I've seen your test scores,' replied Tasha, getting out of the shower. 'You're still way above the curve, mentally…'

'But physically…?' Data took her place in the shower. 'I have never come anywhere near to passing the physical tests, Tasha. My human body is slower and weaker than I ever imagined it might be, and I struggle to train. I'm just too old.'

'Contraction,' noted Tasha.

'Really?'

Tasha nodded. '"I'm too old", not "I am". That's the third today. See? You _can_ learn new tricks.'

'I will never pass the physical tests, and you know it.'

'We can work around that.'

'You should not have to.' Data stepped out of the shower. 'I have been putting more thought into Cambridge University's proposal, of late. Perhaps an academic role would be more suited to my abilities as a human. The remote lecturing technology that they are eager to try out would mean that I would not be bound to the campus – I would be able to interact with students and coworkers wherever there was a holodeck or holosuite available. As your husband, I'd be able to remain on board the Enterprise and work for the University from here.'

'Contraction.' Tasha did up the last fastening of her uniform.

Data paused, one arm into his tunic. 'Perhaps you need to take a moment to fully digest what I just said.'

'No, no,' replied Tasha, brushing back her hair, 'I heard.'

'And…?'

'And, my way of asking is much more impressive than dropping into conversation that it would be handy if we were married, so get ready, go to the damn wedding, wait patiently until after your Best Man speech and then try to act surprised.'

Data sighed. 'I shall try. Although since, as I mentioned before, one of us proposes at every wedding we attend, it shall be difficult.'

'Data?'

'Yes?'

'Shut up.'

'You shut up.'

'Data?'

'Yes?'

She pinned a rose onto the breast of his tunic. 'I love you.'

He straightened out a kink in her fringe. 'I love you, too.'

-x-

THE END

-x-

_And it really is the end, this time. Thank you to everyone for reading & commenting over the years, and to my wonderful Beta Realmlife. It's been a brilliant ride for me, hope it has for you, too._

_Scribbles_

_xxx_


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